


Damian Wayne

by writingtheworks



Series: the c in DC stands for "cringey" [6]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Multi, Reader Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 11:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 60,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19208371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingtheworks/pseuds/writingtheworks
Summary: Damian fics from my reader-insert Tumblr days. Enjoy!





	1. Back to the Future

**Author's Note:**

> “I, Cyra Khadija Rana Wayne, daughter of Damian and Y/N Wayne, refuse to be treated in such a manner! You will surrender yourselves to me,” Her grin turns malicious, and the teenager reveals a katana from the sheath on her back with a resounding shring! Cyra swings the blade once and steadies it into her hands. She scans the crates for signs of life,”…or the tooth fairy will be getting plenty of business tonight.”

“I, Cyra Khadija Rana Wayne, daughter of Damian and Y/N Wayne, refuse to be treated in such a manner! You will surrender yourselves to me,” Her grin turns malicious, and the teenager reveals a katana from the sheath on her back with a resounding  _shring!_  Cyra swings the blade once and steadies it into her hands. She scans the crates for signs of life,”…or the tooth fairy will be getting plenty of business tonight.”

Damian and Dick immediately exchange a confused glance from their hiding place between the shipping boxes. Daughter of Damian and Y/N Wayne? Dick makes a face that probably means _“Uh oh.”_

Behind the raven-haired, honey-skinned, angry-looking sixteen-year-old with the  _Robin_ symbol on her chest is a distinctly Tamaranean girl. Or at least half-Tamaranean, because her skin is a lighter orange and her hair is a deep black… a color akin to Dick’s. The Tamaranean girl bobs in the air behind “Cyra”, the purple energy circling her hands dying as she lands,”I don’t think that portal was to another warehouse, Robin.”

Cyra curses in Arabic, stabbing her sword into the rotting boards of flooring,”That was a good line, too.” She mutters, turning on the screen on her forearm communicator,”I’ll read the area and see what I get. We know the League of Assassins  _has_ been messing with future tech ever since they stole my mother’s vortex manipulator, so we could have just been transported into the past.”

“A  _vor-ta whatsit?_ ” The Tamaranean asks.

Crya rolls her eyes,”It’s a like an Apple Wrist Watch, but instead of calling people you travel through time, Mar’i.” The Tamaranean, sporting an attire very similar to Starfire’s, nods and glances around the warehouse,”Oh. I thought she gave you one of those too?”

“Probably. If she did, it’s gonna be in my utility belt. But dad gave me it like a week ago, so I still have no idea how to navigate it’s pockets.” Cyra states. Her E/C eyes frantically search the screen of her communicator, muttering more foreign words as she types. She briefly glares at Mar’i when the girl snickers,”What?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Mar’i dismisses,”I just imagined that since you have been asking to become the Robin for so long, that the moment he gave you the costume you would know everything about the belt and the fighting.”

“I  _do_ know everything about “the fighting”.” Cyra mutters, turning on her heel and heading straight for the boxes that hide Dick and Damian,”I was raised by  _Batman_. How will I not know?”

The two girls pause and spread out, the older—Mar’i, from what Dick can guess—casting the light of her powers over the crates and searching for clues. The purple illuminates a label on one of the boxes, and Mar’i reads it aloud,” _Wayne Enterprises_. We must be in the Gotham if your family is mentioned here.”  
  


“Good. But bad, because my readings say that we’re in the year  _2017_. My parents would be like, 10. Yours… maybe in their twenties? Grandpa Bruce would still be Batman… hmm.” Cyra pulls off her hood and examines the area once, uprooting her sword from the sinking wood and sliding it into the sheath on her back.

With her words, Mar’i jolts and covers her cheeks,” _2017?!_ How are we going to get back home?  _My_ parents will worry,  _your_ parents will worry, I’ll get yelled at for not doing my chores and—and we’ll miss Lian’s birthday party!” She exclaims.

“Oh  _no_ ,” Cyra whispers gravely, sarcastically. She then whirls around, just  _feet_ from her younger father and uncle, before throwing her hands up in the air,”Mar’i, my father is going to  _kill_ someone if he finds out that some stupid assassins sent his little girl back in time! You  _know_  how protective he is, and I don’t exactly want everyone to be reading about how  _Batman killed somebody_  in the newspaper!”

“How are we going to get back home?” Mar’i whispers fearfully, knotting her fingers together nervously as she approaches her cousin. They exchange a glance, and Cyra’s stance relaxes with a tight inhale,”Look it’s… it’s going to be alright. We’ll get home somehow. Maybe if we can find Grandpa Bruce in this year he can help us.”

“ _Alright, that’s enough!_ ” Damian roars, tearing his sword from its place on his hip. He escapes Dick’s grasp before the Nightwing can grab him, baring his sword like a wild animal would bare their teeth,”You have no right to claim the symbol of  _Robin_ and share the name Wayne—”

“Robin!” Dick yells, trying to calm the boy, but it doesn’t seem to work as Damian stomps up to his future child and aims his sword at her,”You _imposter!_ You have no right—”

“Who the  _HELL_  are you, shrimp? What’s up with the shitty—cos…tume…” Cyra snaps, but the bite in her voice dies as she realizes she is face-to-face with a younger version of her father. Taking a shocked step back, she drops her arm from its protective stance in front of Mar’i,”Oh my god,  _he’s short._ ”

* * *

“The tests confirm it. This is Damian’s daughter, and that’s Dick’s.” Bruce says plainly. More soft and almost… confused, does he add,”My grandchildren.”

“That’s what we’ve been  _trying_ to tell you.” Mar’i says, gesturing wildly with her hands and the tips of her hair aflame with purple. Cyra just continues to mutter to herself as she types, only pausing to shrug at Mar’i,”I mean, I would’ve checked too if my future children showed up to my door.”

“So.” Damian says strictly. Cyra finds it odd how, even if he’s technically not her father  _yet_ and his tone doesn’t sound the same, she still straightens up at the sound of his voice.”You are my child.” Damian crosses his arms over his chest.

“This is very… as you say, the “freaky”.” Mar’i says, staring at Dick intently. Dick nods in agreement, trying to come off as serious instead of blushing at the fact that he and Starfire had a child together. She tilts her head to the side,”Where is mother?”

“Off-planet.” Dick answers, awkwardly shifting at the new title for Starfire. If Kori  _was_ here then lots of confusing things and conversations would take place, making Dick a lucky man. Maybe it’s best that Kori is off-planet.

“And what of you?” Damian cocks up his chin and puffs up his chest to seem more intimidating or… something, to his daughter,”What of your mother? Who is she?”

Cyra eyes him strangely, expression leveled and serious. She smirks,”A badass time-traveler who could  _easily_ kick your ass. But I can’t say much else because, y’know, time-stuff.” Cyra then shifts her weight to her other foot and examines her father’s eyes,”Why are you acting so… strangely?”

“That’s how demon-spawn always is.” Jason snorts, popping another piece of popcorn into his mouth. He shrugs,”Why? He gone soft in his old age?”

Cyra and Mar’i exchange a glance, and Mar’i snickers. Before she can say anything Cyra interrupts her,”My father is a good man. He and I have a special relationship that he doesn’t share with my younger brothers, so it’s weird being in his presence and not having my hair pat or being called  _“altuyur alsaghira”_.”

“Little bird.” Damian translates in a near hiss, glaring at Cyra,”And you have brothers? This must be a joke.”

“We can’t say much else.” Cyra said. She pointedly looks to Mar’i in a _don’t-reveal-anything-big_  sort of way. Bruce shuts down the Batcomputer and faces the circle of people,”Maybe it’s best you don’t say much at all. Either of you could slip up. You’re kids.”

“We are apart of the Wayne family. We are great at withholding information.” Mar’i reminds.

“Is there anything harmless you could reveal, though, just in case?” Dick questions curiously,”Like what future me’s favorite ice-cream flavor is?”

“You taught me how to do the Batglare so I could scare the little kids into listening to me while I babysat.” Cyra comments, gesturing to Bruce. Mar’i snickers,”Or how my dad paid you ten bucks to stalk my boyfriend for three days?”

“Yes! Do you still have a video of me punching him when we found out that he cheated on you?” Cyra asked, mimicking the punch she through. Mar’i holds up her phone (which had been buried somewhere in her costume) and smirks as she waved it around,”Like I would ever delete the best video of the evers.”

“Or that time the twins stole my dad’s cowl and then ripped it in half since they couldn’t share it!” Cyra laughed. Mar’i gestures with her phone once more,”Yep. That one too.”

They all jump with the sudden crack of lightning, and the two girls spin around to greet the entering speedster. The young red-haired girl pulls off her goggles and extends her arms,”There you two are! I thought it’d take me more than just  _a flash_  to find you guys!”

Mar’i crashes into the young girl with a loud cry of,”Iris!”

Not a moment later does another streak of yellow follow, stopping abruptly before Cyra. Before he can hug her she shoves her hand in his face, and he groans and holds his nose,”Good to see you too, Cy.” Jai West said. Cyra rolls her eyes in response.

“How is everyone at home?” Mar’i questions, putting her hands on Iris’s shoulders. Iris West the second begins to avidly speak,”Your dad is flipping out, man! Your mom through a tank when she heard you were gone!”

“Yeah, and Richie went all Red Hood again. He hotwired the Batmobile and started following your trail.” Jai chimes in. Cyra face-palms, muttering something in Arabic,”And how about my baba? My mother? The twins?”

“Your  _baba_ ,” Iris copies the term in a teasing manner,”Is currently having the entire Justice League circle around the planet for you two. He even had Jon check off-world! Your mom is looking for you somewhere in the 1500s I think, and the twins are talking with your grandmother.”

“Is that your dad?” Jai chimes, pointing to Damian in the background. The present batfamily just watches the group exchange in wonder, all subconsciously trying to make sense of the names and the terms. Cyra rolls her eyes and dismisses the comment,”Yeah, but that doesn’t matter. Well, once Mar and I get back I’ll handle my baba, Uncle Dick, and Grandma Talia.” She then points to Jai,”You get all the leaguers together. We’re going to have to talk this out and come up with a solution for this time-traveling. Iris, you get my mom.”

“Yes, ma’am!” They both salute in unison, and Mar’i comments,”Now I know why you lead the Teen Titans. You can rein in the twins.”

Cyra smirks,”I’ve been told I can do a lot more than that.”

“Cool! Well, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon let’s rock n’ roll!” Iris buzzes eagerly, vibrating with her eagerness to return home. She scoops up Mar’i, and allows the girl a second to glance at her father.”Bye, dad! Tell mom I said hi!” She chimes, before Iris giggles and the two speed off and toward the future.

“Hopefully you guys haven’t messed up the timeline again.” Jai snickers. Cyra rolls her eyes, but stops to stare at the family. She gives them nothing but a salute, nodding to Damian,”Remember this; please don’t punch my gym teacher when he failed me in 12th grade. Thank you.” She waves at him once, reluctantly allowing Jai to scoop her up,”Later, losers!” He laughs, before he’s a golden streak fading in the air.

Damian stared at the empty air for a long moment, before snootily looking up at Dick,”Robin. Leader of the Teen Titans. A time traveler, from what I could tell,” Damian lists. He smirks,”My daughter is cooler than yours.”


	2. Back to The Future, part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cyra had said she was the daughter of Damian and Y/N Wayne. Y/N. Such a beautiful name. Damian knows that his internet history had been searched through (“Y/N name meaning”,”Y/N name origin”) because the next morning Dick is smiling a little too hard, Tim snickers whenever they make eye-contact, and Barbara has a persistent and unyielding smirk on her face. He has yet to narrow down any suspects, but the push into his privacy isn’t exactly the first thing on his mind right now. It’s the girl that just took out fourteen armed and powerful men with—with a butter knife.

For some reason, those words stick with Damian out of everything his future daughter had said. Not the mention of his role as the next Batman, Dick’s future children, his  _own_ (seemingly large) group of future-offspring, but the teasing comment about  _her_. Cyra’s sentence is now tattooed inside of Damian’s mind,  _A badass time-traveler who could easily kick your ass._

His ego snaps eagerly at the _“easily”_ bit, because he’s Damian Wayne and no one can _“easily”_  win against him… except maybe his father. The title of “time-traveler” doesn’t exactly surprise him. Cyra Wayne, or “Cyra Khadija Rana Wayne”, as she had so dramatically—in a very Damian manner—declared, had been forced back in time and seemed only mildly miffed with her situation. “Badass” doesn’t surprise him either. Damian Wayne wouldn’t have children with a weakling…

He has gone over them a thousand times in his head. Searching for double meanings, devouring new theories and snatching up any chance to meet new people. Anyone of these encounters could bring Damian to you. But that’s the question… who  _are_ you?

Cyra had said she was the daughter of Damian and  _Y/N_  Wayne. Y/N. Such a beautiful name. Damian knows that his internet history had been searched through (“Y/N name meaning”,”Y/N name origin”) because the next morning Dick is smiling a little too hard, Tim snickers whenever they make eye-contact, and Barbara has a persistent and unyielding smirk on her face. He has yet to narrow down any suspects, but the push into his privacy isn’t exactly the first thing on his mind right now. It’s the girl that just took out fourteen armed and powerful men with—with a  _butter knife._

Or, it  _was_ a butter knife, before she murmured something in a language Damian (nor Bruce) recognized, flicking out the harmless cutlery as she faced the enemy. The silver shines, and the gleam catches in Damian’s eyes and temporarily blinds him. When his vision clears she is now hefting a massive gun of sorts. Robin’s guess is some kind of a blaster, as a tank sits on the bazooka-sized weapon’s end. Within the golden, glowing liquid is a deep purple rock… the source of the blaster’s power.

“Bullets can’t affect me, little girl. Neither can missiles, or rockets. I am a  _demigod_. Do you understand what that  _means_ , you foul, insolent child—?” The bad-guy of the week spits, fisting his hands at his armored sides. He stops short at her expression, suddenly unnerved. The girl does nothing but smiles at him, then holds up a post-it note with her free hand.

_DEMIGOD INCAPACITATOR_

Before Bruce can complete his _“wait!”_ , the girl aims the weapon, steadying her feet against the marble flooring of the ballroom and pulling the trigger. A burst of light fires from the end of the Demigod Incapacitator. It slams into the bad-guy, melting into his chest and making him instantly collapse. The light spreads to the other mini-bosses in the room, and they all tumble with their leader.

“Woo-ee.” The girl wipes her brow for an invisible layer of sweat, relaxing her stance against the massive gun and gently patting its side with a surprised expression,”I honestly thought that wouldn’t work. Maybe it  _was_ a good idea to travel to the 2090’s first.”

This comment awakes something in Damian, and everything clicks together all at once. He has to shush his hope with a dose of reality; maybe that was just an inside joke he didn’t know about, or something else. 2090s. Time-traveler. Oh, screw it.

You jolt when a hand wraps around your arm, instantly causing your body to react. Like the way water will spill when it is directed downhill, you tear your arm out of the person’s grasp, simultaneously elbowing them in the chin and blowing them backward with your foot. You smoothly brush down your leather jacket, adjusting its edges,”Woah, woah, woah, pretty boy. Hands off the merchandise!”

And he _is_  pretty. You immediately know the year you are in because of the style of the Robin costume—and it’s Batman counterpart—then by the person wearing it. Thirteen-year-old Damian Wayne stands before you in all his glory, and you instantly can’t help but smirk. You never read too deep into your own future (who wants spoilers anyway?) but somewhere in the pages of your story his name was written, and many, many times.

You don’t flinch when a sword’s tip is pointed directly at your throat. His tone is a low and threatening hiss when he demands,” _Name_. I want your name.”

“I go by a lot of titles. You’ll have to be specific.” You smile, touching the point of your finger to the blade and gently moving it aside. Damian lets it drop to your surprise. He grunts in indication for you to continue, not in the mood to play games.

“They call me “The Incoming”.” You shrug. Something flashes and the large weapon you were once leaning against is back to its original silver form. You slip it into its holster as you tap your foot,”Or “The cavalry”. I really like that one. Makes people picture some sort of killer warrior princess instead of a [height] fourteen-year-old.”

“Your  _real_ name,” Damian growls. You raise your hands in surrender and smile,”Oh, Damian Wayne, I  _like_ you. You have the fight, the looks,” Your smile turns sarcastic,”And  _certainly_ the charm.”

You stick out your hand, closing your eyes with glee and awaiting the returned greeting,”My friends call me Y/N. I’m a time-traveler. And no, I will not tell you your future even if you pay me in cash.”

Damian’s ears start to ring, and he pauses and takes a step back, shocked. So it is  _you_. Damian Wayne, illustrious and infamous for a number of (possibly illegal) things, marries  _you_ , an immature, comedic, beautiful girl that has somehow already managed to make him blush. Sure, he could blame it on the fact that he  _knows_ you will get married and have children one day but… you also have incredibly enchanting eyes.

Oh, _no._

* * *

“I’m sorry, Damian. I should have been here, I should have helped you—

Damian dismisses the comment with a wave of his hand. You slip your blaster into it’s holster, closing the keypad on your vortex manipulator and sighing shakily,”If I had helped you…” You trailed off quietly.

“It’s not your fault that you weren’t there to fight.” Damian says these words more softly than you would expect, filling the hole your emotions had carved into your chest. For some reason, without your control, your fingers dare forward and limply graze his. Damian’s eyes are steady and unwavering with assurance and comfort,”He threatened my life. You went back to save me. You saved me so I could save everyone else.”

He attempts a loose but cocky grin,”And I believe, by definition, that technically makes you a hero too.”

The early morning air strokes your face with its damp hands, filling your lungs with water vapor and fresh oxygen. This is the least-grayest Gotham’s sky will get; the light sheen of dove-silver coating the sky and casting a peacefully colorless atmosphere over Wayne Manor’s garden. You overlook it from the roof, a meeting place you and Damian had been holding assemblages at for years now.

You let out a half-attempted chuckle, turning your head to the side and staring at the windows of a second-story guest bedroom. Your face matches the color of the window’s interior drapes. Wordlessly, Damian turns your chin to face him, deepening the blush on your face heavily and recapturing your attention. Your breaths mix in the early-morning fog. You only realize he is blushing when the silence becomes awkward, and your inner shyness forces you to look anywhere else but his eyes. You have never seen so much emotion cloud their depths before.

He opens his mouth to speak. The words, for once, catch in his throat and refuse to surface. He gives himself a push and they finally breach the air,”Thank you.” Damian said. Only now do his fingers slip from your face,”And I don’t mean for saving me.”

Damian feels a frisson roll down his spine, ricocheting back up again when your lashes flutter, trying to understand through your surprise. You raise an eyebrow, laughing a laugh that seems almost… nervous.”Then why? What for?” You asked. You cross your arms over your chest, rocking on your heels and tapping your feet. All nervous ticks.

Damian grins to himself. He makes you, the all-powerful time-traveler  _Y/N L/N_ , the “incoming”, the cavalry,  _nervous_.

“For being my friend. Or whatever you want to call yourself in relation to me.” Damian said. He picked at the threading of his button-up behind his back.

Suddenly daring as you comprehend the opportunity to embarrass him, you take a step forward tentatively and tilt your chin,”Am I your friend? Do you want me to be called your friend “in relation” to you, Damian Wayne?”

“No.” Damian answers honestly. He regrets the word the moment it leaves his mouth, too used to the pact you’d made to “be honest” with him. It had become such a habit it had blended with his other instincts, like punching someone who touched him or aiming for the throat. Damian can’t back out now, so he rolls with it,”I do not. Because you are terrible and I hate you.”

You snort, knowing damn well he doesn’t. You take the upper hand with both of yours, smirking, smiling with your eyes, and doing that  _stupidly_ attractive thing where you grab your hip. Damian curses in Arabic. He really has fallen so deeply, if he is not only  _acting_ like Grayson around you but also  _thinking_ like him.

“Yeah, sure.” You smile, nudging his arm with your knuckles. Not knowing what else to say, you wait and stand until he responds. Damian’s blush grows heavier. So heavy that he must look down, taking a sharply keen interest in both of your shoes. You cough,”So what  _do_ you want me to be called, then?”

Again, your tone becomes teasing and your true self returns to the light, shining and reflecting like a diamond buried beneath dirt. You wiggle your eyebrows and snicker,”Aw, am I your  _best friend?_ ”

“Jon is my best friend, tragically.” Damian responds evenly. You pout, laying a finger on your chin and tapping as you think. Used to your antics, Damian enjoys the show despite how much he acts annoyed by your dramatics. Not like he’s a drama queen too or anything…

“That leaves you only one title available, boy wonder. But will you take it?” You smile giddily, spreading your arms and bowing like a magician performing a magic trick. Damian rolls his eyes and crosses his arms,”Fine. Whatever will make you shut up.”

“Cool.” You shrug,”Alright. Well, I have some errands to run in the 1950s, so if you’ll excuse me…” You opened up the screen on your vortex manipulator, counting mentally how long it will take him to grow too curious. Apparently not long, because by the time you reach eight seconds he takes your wrist and lowers it. Surprisingly, he asks,”… Can I guess what you’re calling yourself now?”

Before you can get out your “sure”, Damian hooks his arm around your waist and leans in. The caterpillars in your stomach all change into butterflies all at once, making your body feel as if it is on fire, burning hot and raw with the vibrancy of your own life. Before your lips can touch, Damian daringly whispers,” _Mine._ ”

Your hands grapple to find a place to rest, jumping like startled rabbits from his arms, to his chest, to his shoulders, around his back before eventually, he guides them around his neck. His touch is feather-light and his skin is as hot as the sand of a Californian shore. His hands slide up to cup your face, and you break apart with a soft inhale of air.

From above on the third story roof, Batman— _Damian Wayne’s_  Batman, from the future—and the future, 24-year-old you, watch the scene play out. When the two teenagers below part, the teen-Damian sighs deeply. The teen-you touches her lips in awe, no longer mentally present as his kiss carries her to another world. She trips on her own feet even if she isn’t walking, tumbling into him, grinning when he catches her.

You mouth your younger self’s words, smiling and recalling that exact kiss with goosebumps cradling your being,”Where did  _that_ come from?” She questions, beaming so blissfully that her cheeks are hurting. She plants a hand on his chest and pushes herself up, reluctantly. The two teenagers meet eyes under a different light, and future-Damian has to keep from laughing at his past self’s pleasantly stunned face. The teen-Damian watches teen-you’s face intently, before he huffs,”I have no idea and I blame you entirely.”

“Sounds about right.” Teen-you said slowly. She looks up at him hopefully,”Can I kiss  _you_ this time?”

Teen-Damian nods, threading his fingers down her back as he pulls her closer. She squeezes his biceps, bringing him forward and into her as a mess of intricately tangled knots, slowly untying him as the kiss progresses. She giggles when he almost trips trying to push her into the wall of the Manor. He curses beneath his breath when the kiss breaks, but eagerly reunites himself with her against the brick surface.

“Gross.” Your Damian comments softly, only half-joking,”Was I really that bad of a kisser?” He asked. You could only shrug in response, keeping an eye on the time—you couldn’t be in your past for too long, otherwise, the two teenagers desperately making out below will notice you.”Not like I cared. I was being kissed by the love of my life.”

Damian clicks his tongue, pulling off his cowl and carding his fingers through his hair. He sighs when you run your fingers over his, readjusting his messy locks, soothing his scalp, and reminding him how warm your hands are all in one swing. He glances down at your younger selves and smirks,”Young love, right?”

“Young love.” You agree quietly. You hold up your new-and-improved vortex manipulator, pointing at the time,”We better go, Damian. I’m still a little worried about leaving Cyra with Jason…”

Damian wraps his arm around your waist,”How much damage could they do? Then again, Jason has the mind of a newborn and Cyra  _is_  a newborn.”

You gently elbow your husband, then wrapped an arm around his back,”I’m telling him you said that.” You tease, and Damian places his chin on your shoulder. He challenges,”I  _dare_ you, my beloved.”

You only shake your head at him, typing in some commands on the keypad on your arm. You both spare one last glance at the teenagers… the smile in your Damian’s eyes deepens when he finds that his past self is gazing at your lovingly. With a press of a button the two adults are gone, leaving nothing in their wake but the smell of space-time-energy, a new engraving in the wall of the Manor (DW + Y/I = Better than you), the hope of the future, and the whirring of a time-machine compacted into a watch.

Teen-you glances up at the sound of your vortex manipulator. Damian does the same, but upon finding nothing but empty air he looks back at you eagerly, but questioning,”What was that?”

You shrug,”Whatever it was, I don’t care. Now, c’mon,” You gently tap your lips and wink,”Show me why they call you the boy wonder.”

_

Cyra leans against her father, blinking harshly in an attempt to wake herself. Damian is certainly no better, with his hair ragged from wearing a cowl all night, bruises freshly formed and aching, eyes drooping with lack of sleep. As fun as patrol was, sleeping could be even more fun at times. **  
**

Batman and his Robin are both jerked into the land of the living by a near-identical pair of squeals. Something shatters in one of the Manor’s halls, soon followed by what only could be Richard Wayne’s—the present Red Hood and the eldest child of Damian Wayne—and his response to the breaking of his favorite mug.

“You little _assholes!_ ” He exclaims. The twins shriek gleefully as the young adult begins to chase them, taking this morning’s daily-dose of chaos into the kitchen, along with a rapid increase in volume.

Richard’s speed doesn’t exactly match young Caden’s. Caden swerves around the kitchen island, frantically pulling his twin brother Sebastian along protectively. Both are laughing hysterically, so much so their motions have been slowed down, giving Richard time to scoop them both up underneath his arms and huff,”That was my favorite one, you two! Ma-ma got that for me!”

The twins wriggle in their elder brother’s grasp. Richard only holds them tighter, looking to Cyra for assistance. He nods at the two giggling children,”A little help here, girl wonder?”

Cyra dismisses the three with a tired wave,”You’re on your own. This bird is out of commission.” She groans, leaning against Damian. He winces when the twin’s shriek once more. Maybe fighting a villain with a sound-shattering scream last night wasn’t the best idea. Richard shifts the twins in his arms, perking up when you enter the room.

“Mornin’.” Damian’s arms instantly unwind from their folded position on the counter to envelope your waist. He kisses you softly, trying to hide his smile when Richard and Cyra greet you in unison,” _Sabah alkhyr_ , Mama.” They said. You smile.

“Richie, do me a favor and put down wing one and wing two.” You brush a loose strand of hair out of your son’s eyes,”And go comb your hair.”

Richard snickers,”Never!” He allows the twins their freedom, and Caden makes the leading decision to climb his father’s chair and attach himself to Damian’s back. Being the youngest, Sebastian follows, and Damian suddenly becomes a human jungle-gym in which his children play on. Cyra smirks into her coffee mug,”Having a little trouble there, baba?”

“None at all, أبو الحن .” Damian answered. _Robin._

Damian sighs happily, regardless if little fingers are digging uncomfortably into his back and a toddler’s foot is in his face. He is blissfully euphoric watching you chase Richard with a comb ( _“Let me fix that wild mane of yours, little wing, before you start to look like Medusa!” You yelled. Richard runs a hand through his hair, smirking and striking a flirtatious pose,”I think it makes me look sexy.” Cyra then chimes in,”I think it makes you look like an idiot.”_ ), feeling his two youngest learn to climb before they learn not to break things. He is happy seeing Cyra, his little Robin, getting up from the kitchen island in order to begin her training. He murmurs words of encouragement to her, and she pats his back and calls him “baba” again.

He is happy.


	3. Back to The Future, part iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ease of their family and the lack of discourse and growling almost makes Bruce Wayne jealous. His son has managed to create a family that works and fights together, and he can already sense and see an incredibly strong bond between he and Cyra. The closest Bruce had ever gotten to one of his Robins was with Dick, and Dick lives miles away in Bludhaven and they rarely talk anymore. Even better—Damian has a wife, and one that loves him and is currently brushing her fingers through his hair.

“Thank you for your assistance,” Damian breathed formally and awkwardly, adjusting his tie and sparring a few unfriendly glances at the girl as she stomped off snootily into the bustling crowd of gala-goers. He shivered uncomfortably—he could still feel and imagine the phantom touches of her hands on his arms. _I hate it when people touch me_ , Damian thought irritatedly. You smiled and set your hand on his arm as you began to speak. Damian smiles, a true, forced but a Damian Wayne “I-don’t-like-smiling-but-I’ll-do-it-for-you” smile regardless, not even the “billionaire’s son” smile either.

 _I hate it when_ most  _people touch me_ , He corrects himself.

“No problem. I figured that kind of stuff would happen with you, especially because you’re such a pretty boy.” You teased, scanning the area in the subconscious manner that your training had drilled into you. When your gaze returns to his face your eyes light up. Playfully mocking, you do that stupidly attractive thing where you put your hand on your waist and smirk at him,”Woah, Dams. You must be really happy to see me if you’re smiling.”

The smile evaporates from Damian’s face. For a moment you believe it’s your comment, but then his widened eyes cloud with seriousness. You follow his gaze across the ballroom. In the path his eyes create is two teenagers. Both unnerve you.

One is only slightly shorter than her taller counterpart, with slick, pixie-cropped locks of raven hair, skin the color of honey-dipped caramel, and beautifully sharp eyes. Their color is astounding, possibly the purest [E/C] you had ever seen, even purer than the same shade you see in the mirror every night. But their color is not what makes you uneasy, but the emotion held within them. This girl does not just  _act_ like she knows she can do everything, but  _knows_ she can, and you believe her. Her face is a face of contradictory and contrast; the soft curve of this girl’s cheekbones creates a thin but harsh shadow beneath them, her visage heart-shaped.  _Hard_ heart-shaped. She is built like a lithe soldier, or possibly a spy hidden beneath that black dress.

Her companion is so similar in looks you know that they are blood-related. They both share similar skin-tones and sharpness, like two shadows of knives come to life—utterly  _gorgeous_ knives. His lanky but somehow muscular arm emerge to push up his half-framed glasses. These glasses cover another marvel. His eyes confuse you just as his sister’s did, for they seem to be a dozen different colors in the light. When his head upturns they are spun gold and orange silk, when he faces the crowd they are brown, but then the moment he hides them behind his incredibly messy bangs they are green. You know by his body language he shares a similar mindset with his kin… but this time, he rules the chess board and conquers any machine. He smiles at you across the way. His eyes shine with something magical.

“Where is father?” Damian asks. You cannot seem to hear him.

They radiate something you understand better than anyone as a time-traveler. These children are not from this time. They were not born today or yesterday, but tomorrow. You find your signature shape-shifting butter knife slipping out from the depths of your own dress. You glance at Damian, but only briefly; you cannot lose sight of them.”Damian, I think we might have some unwanted visitors.” You told him.

Damian caught your wrist before you could approach the two children, making sure to hide your weapon between your close bodies.” I know.” He said. Your gaze clashed with his,”You know them?” You guessed. Damian gave a swift nod, too quick to be deciphered. He opens his mouth to explain, but it is then that gunfire cuts through the classical music floating above the crowd. Screams harmonize with it. The crowd immediately blends into a flurry of desperate colors, and by instinct you see Damian reach for his hip—the place where his utility belt and sword are most commonly, but not now.

That same instinct to protect, to take action, alights in Damian’s mind like a match striking a pile of wood damp with gasoline. But the power he holds within himself subdues the feeling. His eyes keep to the girl and the boy.

In the few seconds it takes for Damian to shove you behind the protective barrier of a flipped buffet-table, you search the crowd for those two. You do not find them at first due to the flush of motion, the bowl of peace stirred by whoever fired that gun, but when you do you are once again concerned. They both stand there. They are pillars in the chaos, still and looking up and around for the source of the terror. Unafraid. They knew this would happen.

Damian scans the crowd for his father, and sighs when he discovers Bruce Wayne head locked in the arm of one of the many gunmen now surrounding the room. Everyone involved in this battle suddenly stands solid and still, as if life had been paused. The two teens stay towards the entrance of the room but don’t leave. Bruce growls but does not fight his binds for obvious reasons.

“We have to do something.” You told Damian. Damian shook his head to your surprise, searching the faces of his father’s captors as he spoke. He nods to the teenagers,”No we don’t. Watch them.”

Just as Bruce began to negotiate, the two objects of your attention reel into action. One of the gunmen shouts something out, but he’s abruptly cut off.

The girl marches down the aisles of tables with the weight of her mission guiding her, strengthening her, breathing her in and spitting her back out. There is nothing else on her mind but saving Bruce Wayne and ridding the massive ballroom of any conscious gunmen. You decide you are rooting for her when she starts to take off her high heels as she walks.

Before the gunmen can yell out, she smiles at him and raises her formal footwear,”Hey, do a girl a favor and hold these.” She said sweetly, before abruptly hurling both shoes at his face. The caps of the bottom of her heels are so sharp his skin is cut. The distraction works and she punches him with an unexpected amount of force.

With the takedown of one of their own, the gunmen find their target and start to empty to their magazines. Damian’s breath hitches beside you. But this girl, with the grace of a bird in spring, flips out of the way as the fire follows her. With the attention drawn on his sibling, the boy emerges.

You nearly mistake him for Jason in a costume change, because… well, who else on Earth wears a giant red helmet? But you know that it’s the boy because Jason always uses guns, knives, or the like, and yet the young man tears what looks to be a handful of marbles of from his suit-jacket and lets them fly. In mid-air they split apart, a shrill sound releasing and instantly shattering the dangerous steel weaponry. Appalled by the boy’s feat, the now gunless men stumble and rub off their burned hands.

When he swings in, all you can see is Jason. With every punch he throws he uses the power of his anger instead of just his normal strength. In slow motion you watch him land on two men, pouncing off of their bodies and straight into the most solid uppercut you’ve ever seen. You’re taken away from the scene by the crash of silver and glass.

The girl uses a tablecloth to stun a trio of men, in the same way Bruce uses to stun his cape. The white material swirls and settles on the ground around her like an angel’s wings. But you know now that she is so much more than just an angel, for the moment they are all distracted and it seems like the two men approaching her from behind may defeat her, she jabs her elbows into their noses with barely any force. And yet five men lay groaning or unconscious beneath her feet. And that’s just the ones she took out in that moment.

She leaps onto the round tables dotting the ballroom and begins to traverse them like platforms on an obstacle course. In her strength you see Damian and Bruce accompanied by something foreign. It is in the way her presence demands attention, her bare feet falling with earth-shattering precision and vigor, hopping nimbly from opponent to the next. One after another drop.

The man holding Bruce must have only been in it for the money Bruce could give him (and is a newcomer to Gotham, because everyone knows Bruce Wayne and Batman have ties), as the moment he starts to notice his men dropping like flies—at the hands of two  _teenagers_ no less— he attempts to knock Bruce out (Bruce fakes unconsciousness), and begins dragging him towards the closest exit. You notice the gunmen looks at both teens fearfully, but something in his eyes trembles when the girl targets him.

Suddenly, the two siblings stop wherever they are, raising their chins to the sky and listening with perked ears like wolves hearing the call of their pack. You follow their gazes to the large window. The moon is enveloped by a shadow that grows in size, but the moment the glass shatters you realize that it was no bird or wolf—but a  _bat_.

Batman. Yes,  _Batman_ , flies through the window at top speed, landing solidly on his side atop the longest dining-table in the room. The table in which Bruce and his captor stand at the end of. Batman slides down the slope of the table at top speed on his side, and Bruce manages to break free just as this imposter crashes into the captor.

With one swift and mercy-given blow, the head gunman is knocked out.

Batman stands to his full, towering height, taking two utility belts from his shoulders and raises them. He looks toward the taller boy first, exclaiming,” _Red Hood!_ ” The red-helmeted boy catches the utility belt, solidly locking it around his waist. He takes his grappling gun from off of his hip with a not of thanks.

You look at Damian questionably as the Batman raises the second belt. Already prepared, the girl raises her hand. Batman calls her name anyway,” _Robin!_ ” The second the belt is in Robin’s grasp, she clips it together around her waist and produces a pair of gloves from one of the pockets.

Between the seconds it took for these moments to occur, Robin, Red Hood, and Batman have grouped on one side of the ballroom floor, facing the remaining enemies. Batman and Robin’s fighting stances match, but Red Hood instead aims his grappling hook at the ceiling.

“Looks like you started the party without me,” Batman smirked.

Robin, the girl, holds a trio of batarangs in her now gloved knuckles. She glances at her possible mentor behind the white pupils of her mask and smiles,”Yeah, you missed out on all the fun,  _baba_. What took you so long?”

“ _I bet he saw a petty street thief stealing some lady’s purse and stopped to help,_ ” Chimes Red Hood smartly. His voice is distorted by a device in the helmet.” _That’s just how he is._ ” Without flinching, he shoots the grappling gun toward the ceiling. The wire whips as it is uncoiled, and then the metal teeth snap around the golden light of the chandelier. He tugs once harshly, and the room is shrouded in darkness, nothing but the long, fractured light of the moon through the broken window supplying anything to see in. The chandelier crashes and the gunmen shout out in surprise. The following sounds of ass-kicking are prominent.

“It was actually—” Batman grunts and something splinters, probably a table as a person is tossed into one. His voice is eerily familiar,”—a liquor store robbery. Nothing I haven’t handled before.”

“At least tell me you got the classic Mike-N-Ike’s I like!” Robin exclaims. Bone cracking trails her voice. She’s close. So is Red Hood, as when he fires something—a gun that sounds more like a blaster from Star Wars than the booming kick of a pistol—it lights the area with a miniature purple firework. You can hear the laughter in his young voice when he says,” _Oh, whatever, kid! The Willy Wonka Bottlecaps are so much better!_ ”

“ _Kid?_ ” Robin echoes. You can see their shadows, how he boosts her into the air, watching her fly and bring down an enemy with her. Robin continues,”Richie, I’m old enough to drive the  _Batmobile_ without Dad yelling at me.”

“ _Pops doesn’t yell at you either way._ ” Red Hood responds smartly again. He sounds like  _Jason_ as well. Batman clicks his tongue, and with the noise, everything connects in your head. Your hand lurches for Damian’s. He squeezes.

There’s a final deafening cry of pain with the paired thump of an unconscious body falling. Red Hood looks up, the lights in his eyes glowing like a blue-eyed cat’s in the darkness,” _My scanner’s say that was the last of them. Now we just have to find gramps._ ” His voice fizzled oddly with the scrambler in his helmet.

“Taken care of.” Another voice enters. The minute it hits your ears your stomach jolts, and then connection and energy suddenly swirling at a doubled rate in the air must be felt by the voice too. She looks in your direction with a grin, and pulls Bruce along with her into the middle of the floor. Your future self enters the scene with the amount of flair you would assume she would have.

“Beloved.” Chimes Batman gratefully,”Where were you? You’re even later than I am.”

“I was taking care of all the back entrances. This guy had a bunch of exits in place and I took out all of em’.” The older woman smiled. She strides past Bruce and looks over the two children. She rubs her sleeve over a scuff mark on the Red Hood’s helmet, and he cocks his head to the side like he’s smiling,” _Smart._ ”

“I know.” She smirked. She nodded at Robin and offered her a pack of Mike n’ Ikes,”These are for you, baby. I got you your favorite too, Richie.” She extended a box of Bottlecaps to the Red Hood, and both teenagers snatch them up and cry out excited  _“thank you!”_ s _._ She waves them off with a motherly smile.

 _“_ Nothing for me?” Batman smirked. The woman snickers, and the two share a brief but sweet kiss.”Nevermind.” Batman responds a little dreamily. He flashes a grin—not a  _Bat-grin,_ but a normal grin that seemed very dad-like,”Thanks.”

In the moonlight, the figures gather, and suddenly all of their faces, masks, ears, and helmets are illuminated by the forearm communicator on Batman’s wrist. You pull Damian up from your hiding place and he leads you to Bruce’s side, who stands in the ghostly blue light of the device, brushing off his suit.

“Thank you for that,” Bruce says, just as unnerved as you would expect. Police sirens can be heard somewhere in the distant streets of Gotham city. Your home, Damian’s home, Bruce’s home, and the  _Batman’s_ home.

Damian questioned,”Father, are you alright?”

“Fine.” Bruce nodded to his sixteen-year-old son and you, before glancing toward the group standing before all of you.”Cyra,” He said, looking to Robin. She waves casually,”Hey, gramps.”

“Who are these people?” Damian asked, and Bruce echoed his words in a more demanding tone.

Cyra takes off the domino mask she wearing, glancing at the others among you with the eyes you now realize she gets from… you. Red Hood takes off his helmet to reveal the same sharp and honeyed face you’d focused on before. But now that you’re closer, you can match teh shape of his jaw and his lips to the Batman’s.

“Oh, don’t act like you haven’t figured me out yet.” Batman snickered when he remained unidentified. He hooked his thumbs beneath the nose of the cowl and tugged it over his head, laying it over the trench-coat-like collar of his suit.

As it slid off, the first face that appeared made Damian’s breath catch in his throat. As far as faces go, this one was a good one. It was undoubtedly handsome, incredibly sharp, well kept, and worn with frown lines that had begun to fade. Also, incredibly battle-worn. Very, very battle worn.

Damian Wayne,  _future_ Damian Wayne in his late thirties and yet still looking like a European model, flashes a signature bat-smirk,”…Father.” 

_

The commotion enters the Batcave in the most startlingly  _normal_ way possible for anything involving time-travel and Damian Wayne.

“I  _don’t_ have a crush on her!” Richard Wayne, or “Richie” as the other three future-family members keep calling him, exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air and almost hurling his helmet across the room.

Damian—older Damian, who you’ve all decided to call “Dams” to avoid confusion—snorts, pulling his cowl off and shutting the driver’s door to his Batmobile. The locks click behind him automatically and Dams strides forward to join the dray, trenchcoat fluttering behind him,”TT. And I thought I raised a better liar. Richard, you have failed me.”

“Yeah, what  _Baba_ said. You  _suck_ at lying.” Cyra echoed. She smirked, peeling off her domino mask and punching her brother in the arm. With a teasing grin, she snickered,”Lara Kent. Still can’t believe you’d ever fall for one of the supers.”

“Um, says the person dating an  _actual villain!_ ” Richie fired back. Cyra scowled, and she looked so much like Damian you have to double-take,”Hey! My Jessica is not a  _villain_. She just happens to steal from people sometimes. It’s a Catgirl thing.”

“Ma, help me out here. I  _do not_  have a thing for Supergirl.” Richie defended, pointing to himself with both hands.

Your future self—or Batmom, which was a common term that no one laughed at—gave her son a shake of her head. She gently pats his arm,”The first step to acceptance is denial, little wing. Don’t worry. I think she likes you too.”

“If she doesn’t, I’m telling the world I’m Batman.” Dams announced. He bounces up the steps to the Batcomputer with Cyra eagerly on his tail, laughing at his statement,”Oh yeah. If she doesn’t have a thing for him, I’d be a little concerned. I mean, she flew across the world because she thought he was in danger…”

“She did that?” Richie said softly. Cyra laughed and nodded, while Dams mumbled something about being  _“related to Jonathan Kent”_ and  _“hell no”_.

They collect around the Batcomputer, Dams settling into the center console’s chair, Batmom leaning against it, Richie crossing his arms over the back, and Cyra perching on the arm and half-resting on her father. All jumbled together as an almost-complete set, they seem right. Dams and yourself are happy and smiling even if only slightly. Cyra and Richie have such similar faces and bodies that everything fits into place.

The ease of their family and the lack of discourse and growling almost makes Bruce Wayne jealous. His son has managed to create a family that works and fights together, and he can already sense and see an incredibly strong bond between he and Cyra. The closest Bruce had ever gotten to one of his Robins was with Dick, and Dick lives miles away in Bludhaven and they rarely talk anymore. Even better—Damian has a wife, and one that loves him and is currently brushing her fingers through his hair.

“Why are you here this time?” Damian—your Damian—asked. He huffed and crossed his arms over his chest, which his future self observed and chuckled at. With a smile, one true and nothing like Damian Wayne at all, Dams addressed himself,”TT. Did I really have such a baby-face? I always imagined something more… dangerous.”

Cyra clutched her stomach and started laughing so hard she almost fell off the chair. Batmom caught her by the cape while stifling her own laugh. Collectively, they all tried to hide their giggling as Dams began to speak and explain. It was then as the tone of the conversation grew professional and important that he matched it, but still with something better than happiness quirking in his less-serious eyes.

“Cyra came here three years ago after my mother Talia Al Ghul got her hands on time-manipulating tech. We recently located the artifacts she had been using, but she hid them before we could acquire them. When we went to search the locations we learned they were hidden, they were not there. Y/N assumed she hid them in the past and we’ve come to find them and destroy them.” Dams said. He then added,”…Also, I really need a vacation. Where’s everyone else? Dick, Jason, and the others?”

“Either off-world, busy, or out of Gotham.” You told them, staring at Batmom’s face. Were you really that pretty? No wonder Damian gazed at you across the room so much (and then acted like he wasn’t).

“Damn. The house is empty for once. That’s weird.” Cyra commented.

“It’s  _nice_.” Dams and Batmom corrected together. Batmom smiled at him, breathing and closing her eyes,”I could use the peace and quiet. You kids—combined with the twins, and Mar’i, the animals, Jessie, and the occasional visit from the  _entire Justice League_ and  _Superfamily_ —are loud.”

“No, we’re not!” Richie said, loudly. Dams rolls his eyes.

“Well, I’m sure Master Bruce, Master Damian, and Ms. Y/N would all enjoy you staying for as long as needed.” Alfred chimed,”Shall I prepare guest bedrooms?”

“Three, please. And thank you so much, Alfred.” Batmom grinned. Dams nodded with a refrained and sad smile that made Damian’s stomach twist,”Yeah.” He looked at Alfred like he was meeting an old friend after such a long time,”You’re the best.”


	4. Gorgeous Beloved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nearly every couple on planet Earth gives each other nicknames—it’s a natural part of a romantic (and platonic) relationship, whether it be names like “darling” or “asshat”. You and Damian Wayne are no different… or, at least you would be, if everyone knew you were dating.

It’s so natural. The word is easily as subconscious of an action as adding a period at the end of a sentence, or possibly even walking. Damian is constantly on guard, constantly considering what he’s saying (most of the time…), constantly thinking and considering and deciphering. You, on the other hand… you were bound to slip up. There’s no way you wouldn’t.

Fall is a beautiful time of year, even if everything is dying. The wind combined with the cooler temperatures often mean you can wear hoodies and sweatshirts. If you’re lucky you can get your hands on one of Damian’s, so when you can’t sleep after a horror movie marathon you can breathe in his protective scent and fall into a deep and euphoric slumber. And of course, fall is the time of year in which Halloween approaches.

“We should do a couples costume, but act like we didn’t plan it.” You suggest into your scarf, side-eyeing Damian. He kneels down to accept the frisbee which Titus had retrieved, and you smile at him mischievously,”Oh! I have an idea!” You beamed. You pointed at your boyfriend,” _You_ be the slutty cheerleader, and  _I’ll_ be the buff football captain.”

Damian snorts, reeling back his arm and tossing the frisbee as far as he’ll allow it. Titus sprints after it, barking joyfully and leaping about in order to chase the colorful toy. You examine Damian’s face, his daring cheekbones and sharper jaw and pretty green eyes. Damian turns his head at your sudden silence, completing your thought before you can even voice it,”And no. I will not be a Disney Prince.”

“Are you sure… ? Because you  _certainly_ look the part,” You gesture proudly to his visage. Gently, playfully, almost in a flirtatious manner do you poke his muscle-taut arm,” _Gorgeous_.”

You giggle upon seeing his reaction. Damian flushes red as every drop of blood in his face tries to fight against his iron-will, the accompanied and resulting glare he aims at you losing its effect due to the sudden mass of color on his expression.”Shut up.” He hisses beneath his breath. This only makes you laugh harder.

“What?” He huffs.

You wave your hands, still giggling,”I don’t mean it in a bad way, Damian, it’s a compliment.”

Damian rolls his eyes,”I am aware of your intentions, but I do not understand  _why_.”

You shake your head at him, sliding your arms around his waist and laying your ear against his heart. You melt when his fingers rise to brush strands of stray hair out of your face. You smile,”Well, I do love you for your personality; you’re a really good person at heart, and you’ve gone through so much but bounced back so well… I respect you for it. But, hey, you also happen to be the sexiest man I’ve ever met so…” You trailed off, descending into deeper laughter.

Damian chuckles, deep and hearty in his chest, and the reaction is so surprising your chin shoots up as your eyebrows do. He smirks,”I  _am_ aware of that, beloved.”

The teasing undertone his voice carries suddenly drops. His phone rings once, twice, and a third time before he gets it out of his pocket and answers. Damian grunts into his phone,”What do you want, Grayson?”

You can only hear gibberish, but judging by your boyfriend’s expression you would guess that whatever Dick said isn’t pleasant. At least, for Damian anyway. You take the liberty of playing fetch with Titus until Damian completes the call.

“We have to return to the manor. We’re having a “Halloween movie night”. Selina will be there, apparently.” Damian then whistles, the sound carrying over the air and through the grass, directly into Titus’ ears. The dog bounds over with the frisbee caught in his teeth, and joins you and Damian in steady stride. You smile,”Yay. We get to see Bruce constantly flustered till patrol.”

Damian only shakes his head and rolls his eyes. Selina always had a way of making Bruce Wayne blush (and sometimes stutter), using methods that made Damian gag. But then again, he couldn’t exactly judge… behind closed doors, he fell for the same tricks at your hand too. A secretive wink in his direction or your fingers touching his thigh beneath the table, and then he’s pressing you into a private area as his lips press onto yours. But there are also times where he can do nothing but fume as you flirt with him. Either someone is too near or catching on, he’s in the middle of a mission with no way to get to you, or you’re teasing him and he can only beg to get what he wants—Damian Wayne does  _not_ beg.

“Actually, hang on.” You stop him, half-turning him with the hand placed on his arm. You glance at his lips and tilt your head at him, and Damian already knows what you’re going to ask. ”You know we can’t kiss  _there_ , so can I have my goodnight kiss _now?_ ” You wondered, gently playing with the buttons on his coat.

He loves the forbidden feel of your touch, how it’s as if something disastrous would happen if anyone discovered the things you do to him. This could be meaning in the literal sense, where you slap his butt playfully when he least expects it, kiss him and nuzzle into him for warmth at night, and whisper three words into his ear in a tone that makes the ex-assassin strive endlessly for your matched devotion. It could also be in the metaphorical sense, which is more… difficult to explain.

Damian looks around the park suspiciously, up in the trees and behind bushes, between rows of cement and buildings. Finding no prying eyes or even nearby citizens, the Wayne boy dips down and huffs in an attempt at showing vexation. An attempt that barely masks the severity of his desperation for your affection and guilt of having to hide it for such silly reasons; while most super-hero couples stayed quiet mostly for the sake of their lover’s protection, Damian had wanted it purely to keep his reputation and develop a privacy. You liked it because of the risk, which Damian—or anyone else for that matter—could have easily guessed.

You smile at his mockery of secrecy, gently cupping his neck as you lower your scarf to reveal the lips he is so intent to kiss. His eyes flutter shut as his head tilts to the side. And then you are welcomed into a bliss like no other, so intense and soft and  _welcoming_ that there is not even a name for this special concoction of emotions.

“Of course, my beloved.”

The grin he tries to hide is caught just before he turns his head away. You continue down the path and act as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, like you weren’t just gifted a piece of truly unreachable paradise. Your fingers graze Damian’s as you walk side-by-side. He grazes back. It’s a game. You draw your knuckle down the back of his hand, pulling your scarf over your infectious beam,”I love it when you call me that, Damian Wayne.”

_

“We’ll split into pairs. Go with your usuals.” Bruce said gruffly.

Barbara smiles at Duke and waves him over in a welcoming manner, and at the same time, you see Cassandra and Jason high-five. Tim nods at Stephanie and she frantically pats the space beside him like someone else is going to steal it if he doesn’t sit there first. Selina nudges Bruce with her elbow, slyly leaning against him with a smirk on your face. Usually, you were paired with Duke, but what with Dick out sick and not filling in as Damian’s partner, then that left you to work with your boyfriend.

“I will work on my own, father.” Damian immediately says in the same moment Bruce says,”You’ll work with Batgirl, Robin.”

You don’t think anyone is paying enough attention to you to notice when you wink at Damian. You lean over the handles of your motorcycle and address your counterpart flirtatiously,”Looks like that means you’re stuck with me, gorgeous.” You nod toward the group and tease,”Wanna ditch and go make out behind Gotham clock tower?”

Damian’s acting skills could rival that of the world’s best actors, so you’re not surprised to see that his expression is unchangingly stoic, the accompanied tone leveled and unaffected,”No.” Damian states, like you ask these sorts of questions all the time—which you do, but Damian’s family doesn’t exactly know that.

The silence is suddenly the loudest sound, and you turn your head to meet the gazes of a multitude of confused (and uncomfortable) bat and bird-themed heroes. You furrow your brows and blush as you understand they heard you, awkwardly shrugging,”…What?”

Selina, bless that woman, breaks the silence. She points between the two of you with a claw.”Are you two… a thing?”

“No.” You and Damian answer at once, exchanging a glance which could mean a multitude of things. Damian glares behind his mask, _“stop blushing, you’re making it obvious”._  You smile back crookedly, _“I can’t exactly help it because I embarrassed myself please help”._

Later, when Damian mounts your bike and wraps his arms around your waist, you breath,” _I’m sorry, Damian. It just… slipped out._ ”

His lips graze your neck when he whispers next,” _It will be fine. But I have a question._ ” He doesn’t wait for your response, tilting his head to the side and smirking into your hair,” _…Is your offer to ditch and makeout on the clock tower still standing?_ ”

You laugh down at the controls. Starting the bike, you plot a mental route to a different destination,”For you, gorgeous?” You said, turning your head so your nose grazes his cheek,”Always.”


	5. The Other One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damian Wayne is suddenly being very affectionate, and the moment he drops and “I love you” you know he’s done something wrong. But what is it this time?

Have you ever entered your home, or a place that was familiar to you in an instinctual sense, and then felt like something was off? Like something miniscule was gone and made the picture incomplete, or everything had been moved a couple inches to the left, making things look normal but just…  _slightly_ different? Because that’s how it feels right now as you stand before Damian Wayne. **  
**

There is the rigidness of his form that you are accustomed to, but it is not caused by the tautness of his muscles and his overall stance. Damian seems anxious. He keeps rubbing his hands up and down his legs. His eyes flutter about the room, and he jumps when he hears you enter.

You drop your backpack on the cushion beside him, bending over the couch to wrap your arms around his shoulders from behind. When you press your lips and nose into his cheek you can feel his skin heat heavily. Making Damian Wayne blush was one of many of your favorite pastimes involving him, the others needing a more…  _private_ setting to occur. He tenses slightly at your touch, which you aren’t surprised by considering how he usually is with everyone. He doesn’t smell how he usually does though, but like a mock copy of his normal scent of metal and some kind of aftershave. Must be trying out new body washes.

You smile against his cheek, kissing the skin beneath his eye,”Happy Friday, Damian Wayne.”

Damian turned his head, watching your expression with a one coated in failed-to-hide surprise, but he swiftly concealed it more professionally. Damian murmured,”Happy Friday, Y/N.”

At not being called  _“beloved”_ , your stomach twisted oddly; you were alone and Damian had not seen you all day… did he not feel safe enough to call you by the nickname you had fallen in love with? It was customary. It was his own special kind of  _“welcome home”_. At this thought, you unravel your arms from his shoulders and walk around the couch. Damian looks you up and down, either impressed with your appearance, in awe, or utterly terrified. You can’t really tell because he’s never shown so much emotion on his face at once. It’s overloading even you.

“I missed you today.” You confessed tenderly. His lips part and his brows raise when you plop down in his lap innocently, hooking your arms around his neck. It is a little unnerving, seeing him show even you so much of what he’s thinking on his face. Damian Wayne must not be feeling well, because when he looks at you he becomes a little dazed and distracted, and after you sat in his lap he looked more than pleasantly surprised. He fingers flutter unsurely, before settling on your waist and pulling you deeper into his lap.

“Is that so?” Damian questioned. He smirked, but the way he performed the action didn’t seem strictly him. Figuring he’s just going through something—nothing you couldn’t help—you glance down at his lips, placing a playful finger on his bottom one. You hummed a yes. Damian hummed back, distracted with… something, and probably you. He had told you how beautiful he thought you were, but he had never exactly acted it out as he was now, or stared at you with so much lust and wonder. Your heart raced at his newfound openness; you are thrilled.

Damian’s lips part, eyes never leaving your mouth. His gaze flicks upward and at your pupils, where you take in the emotional colors showing on Damian’s face. When you lean down and accept his lips in a kiss, he responds near  _too_ eagerly, hands jumping up your back and squeezing every part of you he can. The kiss is little awkward too. That might be what first got you thinking, as Damian is such a fluid and smoothly romantic kisser that, even when you shared your first kiss, he had always been an expert.

You giggle when he plants a kiss against your jaw, fingers gliding through his hair, down his neck and back up again. Damian smiled.”Go out with me.” He stated instead of asked. You don’t exactly complain when he starts to leave slow kisses on your neck and shoulder. You laughed,”We’re already dating, Damian.”

“I mean on a date.” He clarified politely.  _Politely_. As in without the customary added, _“obviously”_  or  _“idiot”_. Damian’s palm flattened on your back.”Like we go out to eat or something.” Damian smirked again, this time more familiar. His tone turns sensual.”I want you all to myself.” He whispered.

“D-Damian!” You laughed when he kissed your chin. He’s never been so affectionate before. Before you can question what triggered it, he grabs your jackets from off the couch and urged you to stand. When you are faced with the entirety of his height, Damian opens your coat and helps you put it on, smoothly wrapping his arms around you when the fabric pulls around you. He kisses your neck once more,”You are  _so_ beautiful, my beloved.” He murmured.

“Thank you, Damian.” You blushed deeply. Where was this coming from? What had he done to warrant the need to make you extra happy? You tried not to frown.” But what’s gotten into you? Why are you being so… affectionate?” You asked, laughing awkwardly in your confusion.

Damian only shook his head, body suddenly tense. Regardless, he dismisses this and tilts your chin towards him, then  _smiles_ ,”TT. It’s because I’m in love with you.”

He states the words like they are an everyday thing. You know for a fact that Damian Wayne has only said _“I love you”_ to you twice. Once when he thought you were dying, and another time when he was heading into a suicide mission. Those had been private moments, where he was feeling and almost  _bleeding_ a need for the acceptance and love that you always gave him.

In desperate times, lonely nights, or moments of weakness you thought of the most recent time he had spoken those words to you. You can visualize the scene like one could visualize a loved one’s face; the engine of the Batwing fired up and humming behind you both, the coarse material of his gloves pressing into your palms, his cool lips molding against your knuckles before he pressed them against his heart. You can still hear him say it even after months since that night, _”I love you, Y/N L/N. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”_

That’s the moment you begin to realize.

_

“…Did you really rent out the entire place on such short notice?” You questioned.

Damian nodded smugly, your shoes tapping in unison against the dining room’s floorboards. It’s elegant and probably about the size of a ballroom, filled with tables that waiters and waitresses scurry around silently as they prepare for an event later in the day. Two finish up preparing a table for the both of you and they disappear by the time you reach the table blanketed in sunlight. Damian pulls out your chair, positioned just in front of the large windows, and the boy kisses your temple as he passes in order to sit down in his own chair.

A waiter delivers you both menus, and by the time you choose your drink Damian has locked you into conversation, which you don’t contribute much to. Something is off. Something  _must_ be off, because he keeps flashing you crooked smiles, playing footsie beneath the table, smiling more, and even daring to stroke your hand while he listens to you speak. To make matters more mysterious, he keeps looking out the window as the sky darkens. You’ve started counting now. He’s glanced at the entrances at least five times in the last four minutes of your conversation.

“Is everything okay, Damian?” You asked. You set your fork down on your plate, the silverware clinking in the nearing-uncomfortable silence. His phone buzzes just as he’s about to answer. Damian stands from the table and removes his phone from his pocket, shifting his eyes about the gallery on the second floor of the room.

“Everythings fine, beloved. I just have to take this call—”

A shadow casts over the window, and you have just enough time to leap out of your chair and out of the way. Glass becomes painful rain and crashing is the only sound you can hear. The window shatters, the cutlery on the table flies, and the china you were eating on splits apart as boots crush them. Something metal rings as it is swung, and then you are meeting eyes with Damian Wayne.

For a split second your mind questioned how Damian had managed to change clothing so fast and  _“hey, since when does he look so beat up?”_. That is, until you spot the other Damian Wayne, still dressed in a suit and holding his phone. His odd behavior all afternoon suddenly made sense; the affection, the _“I love you”_ , the awe of your own appearance—you  _were_ an attractive girl, and technically it was the clone’s first time seeing you for himself. He was a clone or a shapeshifter of some kind. And you had  _kissed_ him.

Your Damian looks down at you; he’d probably been captured, or at least someone  _attempted_ to kidnap him and replace him with a look-alike. His lip is bleeding and he already has a couple bruises forming and puffing up his face. The sword in his grasp reflects the clone’s eyes, and Damian’s don’t stray from the enemy.

“Y/N?” Your Damian called.

You stole a steak knife from one of the tables, raising yourself into a defensive stance,”I’m fine.” You assure,”Y’know, except for the fact that you never told me you have an  _identical twin._ ”

Damian jumps off the table and lands solidly a few feet before the clone. You join his side as he said,”I didn’t know either.” He huffed.

The clone’s expression darkens once he understands he’s been caught. Your questions can wait until later, but it seems that the sickness rising up your throat doesn’t like that idea. You kissed a copy, let a clone touch you and even sway you to believe his identity. You knew something was off. Why hadn’t you noticed it?

“Who sent you? Why are you doing this?” Damian hissed.

The clone grits his teeth, suddenly dropping the surprised deer-in-headlights look. The action seems too right on Damian’s face. Damian’s copy drops the phone and crushes it under his heel,”That will be revealed in due time.”

You and your Damian exchanged a look. Damian turns his glare on his counterpart,”Wrong answer.”

Damian reels back his foot, swiveling into a sidekick that narrowly misses his clone’s cheekbone. The clone steps back and ducks all of Damian’s strikes. He even manages to avoid the knife you hurl at him, and the several following forks. Damian kicked the copy backward and into your dinner table, but the copy manages to get the upper hand and rolls over its surface, gripping the table’s edge and throwing it at the two of you with enough force to distract you. You spot the flurry of panic in his eyes, but the feeling is accompanied by a strong sense of high. Adrenaline high.

When you recover from the blow, pressing yourself to your feet only to find your Damian already standing, you are too late and too far away to reach the window in time. Damian’s clone smirks at the both of you, wiggling his fingers in a wave of goodbye,”See you later.”

”By the way,” His smirk transforms into a malicious grin that digs under your skin and roots there. He winks at Damian.”Your girlfriend is an amazing kisser.”

Damian releases a cry of anguish just as the clone leaps from the broken window. You both rush after him, looking through the shards of glass, down at the lower floors of the building, and the non-stop motion of the street below. The clone is nowhere in sight.

You both stand there, suspended in time and coming down from the rush of emotions and energy. Damian tightens his grip around his sword’s blade and breaks the silence, ”You  _kissed_ him?” He hissed.

“I thought he was  _you_.” You moaned in distress. Collapsing onto one of the tables and putting your face in your hands, you try to ignore the blatant disgust your body wants to display when you can still taste the clone’s kiss. It hadn’t been him. It hadn’t been  _your_ Damian at all. You hated how much you liked the new breeds of affection the clone gave you, his gift of those rarely-spoken three words, the sweet and tenderness you wanted Damian to show you more than anything.

Pushing aside your thoughts, you pull your hands from your face and try not to act as repulsed as you feel. You search your boyfriend’s visage for anything that could indicate an even more dangerous situation. It’s surprising to see the honest worry in his eyes, the jealous tenseness in his shoulders, and the obvious disregard for himself as he asks,”Are you alright? Did he hurt you?”

“Yes, Damian,” You laugh without humor. When he comes closer, you hesitate to put a hand on his arm.”Really, I’m fine,” You told him, despite feeling sick… Could that be considered cheating on him? Even if you didn’t know? You scan his face for something distinctly  _Damian_ , and half-heartedly joke to make everything better,”And how do I know you’re not a second clone to trick me again?” You asked him.

Damian wordlessly cups your chin with one hand and kisses you, firmly and more to prove a point than to express love or devotion. You tense with the sentiment regardless, stiffening in the same way Damian does when you kiss him out of nowhere as well. After he realizes you’re uncomfortable he retracts from you. The second he pulls away and finds his breath, he rolls his eyes,”That’s a stupid plan and I highly doubt anyone would do that.”

“Yep,” You smiled crookedly at him, ”It’s definitely you.”

“Now, come on.” Damian scooped up his discarded grappling line and retrieved his mask from somewhere in his clothing, ”We have a doppelganger to find, beloved.”


	6. Balance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I heard Selina clipped your claws,” Damian said. It’s surprising to hear the lack of taunt in his voice. He takes a step forward, and the lights of Gotham city stretch all the way from their origins to stroke his face. The tan color of his skin deepens and becomes a richly smooth caramel. Curiously, he inquired,”What happened between the two of you?”

Tonight, the layers of mist over the tops of Gotham city are grape-flavored cotton candy before it’s wrapped around the cone, blanketing the skyscrapers and business and apartment complexes with a thin sheet of purple. Silver lights blink beneath the damp clouds.

When you look skyward the clouds and the mist match in hue. The fog had once been a part of the mass, until it could no longer latch on and fell to the Earth. That makes Selina Kyle the nighttime sky and you the mist beneath her.  _Beneath_ her.

The chorus of a song can be heard through the brick exterior of the building, muffled in the manner that you wish your emotions could be; so what? You weren’t  _Catgirl_ anymore. Was that really  _that_ big of a deal? Not like going out on patrol in the East end of Gotham city was the best part of your entire day or anything. The freedom and liberties that costume gave you certainly didn’t matter… even if when you pulled the goggles over your eyes  _you_ felt more you than ever before. Oh yeah, it  _definitely_ didn’t matter.

…Note the sarcasm.

If you think about it too long then your eyes start to sting, your vision starts to blur, your hands start to fist at your sides. But that’s not good for balance, so you extend them as you walk along the building’s edge. The cold rail under your bare feet is nice. But then it’s not nice anymore because then you can hear the hiss in Selina’s voice, the costume being torn as she tries to rip it out of your hands, and your heart breaking right along with it. Maybe if you had just told her how much being  _Catgirl_ meant to you…

It’s pointless to argue now. She taught you better than that. You never beg, you never plead. But she also taught you that when you want something, want it  _bad_ , then you take it with no questions asked. What advice do you follow?  _Maybe she made it like this_ , You thought, _so contradicting that I will never understand._

The roof entrance shuts against the shoe you had propped within it. You turn at the sound, expecting a party goer to tell you to get back down to the lounge, or some woman imagining that you’re about to jump from your perch. The battle math part of your brain kicks into motion; even if you did fall, there’s a flagpole a few feet down you could latch onto and swing from.

But when the dangerous combination of overconfidence and skill in Damian Wayne’s gait presents itself, you have to turn your eyes back to your feet. You don’t need to look to know where to find your balance. But you need to look now because acting like he’s not there is the best solution.

You know what Selina would tell you to do right now: “ _Digest those butterflies and look him in the eye. Assert yourself._ ” You would usually use this advice, but Selina Kyle is no longer the woman you look up to…  _any_ other woman besides her could take that place in your heart. Something about the way Damian approaches you makes you think he has an idea of who. 

You don’t know whether you should quell the fluttering in your stomach—he could be here to just insult you, which it wouldn’t be the first time—or to… let them loose—he could be here to flirt with you, and it wouldn’t be the first time either. You’re starting to hate this contradicting relationship too.

“If I didn’t know any better I’d say that you’re dressed to kill, L/N.” Damian greets. He folds his hands into the pockets of his slacks.

“You  _do_ know better, so you know that _I_  am dressed to kill, Damian.” You respond without tearing your gaze from your feet. They start to wobble on the rail.

There is a long pause, in which he watches you traverse each end of the metal in your tights. His gaze on your back is searing… in a good way. You finally glance back at him when the silence begins to thicken, brushing back strands of your hair as the breeze messies them, steadying yourself onto one foot. You smirk at him. He smirks back.

“I heard Selina clipped your claws,” Damian said. It’s surprising to hear the lack of taunt in his voice. He takes a step forward, and the lights of Gotham city stretch all the way from their origins to stroke his face. The tan color of his skin deepens and becomes a richly smooth caramel. Curiously, he inquired,”What happened between the two of you?”

“Careful,” You smile humorlessly, twisting in something akin to a ballet turn and beginning to tread your way to the other end of the rail,”I’ve heard that curiosity killed the  _bat_ , too.”

“But satisfaction brought it back.” Damian completes the phrase. He smirks,”And you  _want_ me to stay, don’t you?”

You don’t answer. He smooths down the front of his ornate clothing, buttoning his jacket before he hefted himself up onto the rail as well. His balance is utterly perfect. Yours would be too if you were in that damn costume. It’s the passcode to the safe containing the real Y/N L/N.

“TT.” Damian clicks his tongue, shaking his head. The smirk doesn’t make it’s way off his face, so he must take your silence for a _“yes”_. When you do not turn to face him, he coughs. And when you still do not look at him, he rolls his eyes and called your name.

He always seems to know what you’re thinking. He always knows what you’re thinking, because when he looks at you he knows that he’s not talking to the real Y/N. You thought that Catgirl was who you are—but that’s not true either. The girl Damian is searching for is buried beneath dozens of personalities. If he had to guess, Damian would say he’s on the third to last.

He doesn’t know why, but he likes how he has to be the one to jump off and step in front of you in order to see your face. You took orders from no one but yourself. When he does see your face, meets the eyes he sees when he’s stressed, sees the soul of the girl he’s been searching for within them, Damian finds the  _real_ part of him climb out too.

“ _Some girls look good in diamonds,_ ” Selina said,” _Some girls make diamonds look good._ ” Damian now understands what she meant. He saved the mental image of your brushing strands of hair from your face, smiling down at your feet as you spoke to him.

“My father has been pestering me as of late, telling me to “make friends”.” Damian quoted.

Well, Bruce always was, but this was a special occasion. Father wasn’t just saying to  _“make friends”_ … but to rather _“find a partner”_. Damian had confused the meaning at first, saying that he was Batman’s partner, right? Bruce only shook his head at his son,” _No, Damian,_ ” He glanced at Barbara and Dick as they conversed,” _Not that kind of partner… exactly, anyway._ ”

Damian still didn’t understand, and this confusion finally broke when Alfred brought out the photo album. TT.  _Obvious_.

Damian hated—but at the same time, loved, if such a thing was possible—how you had been the first to enter his mind. He guesses he’ll have to have one definition of partner before the other.

“It has been stated many times that we make an adequate… team.” Damian said formally, or as formal as a person balancing on a rail could sound.”My mother has even mentioned how she approves of our alliance. My father has said time and time again that I work well with you, moreso than I do with others, and—”

You set your hand on his shoulder, furrowing your brows and giving his muscle a short squeeze,”Are you feeling okay?” You question him through a laugh. Damian glares at you; he must not be happy with admitting so many truths either. He sighs deeply, trying to act regrettable, but you can tell by the smile hiding deep within his expression that he is not as annoyed as he leads on.

“With Gordon now  _Oracle_ , Cass  _Black Bat_ , and then Brown back to being  _Spoiler_ , then no one is present to hold the mantle of the Batgirl to…  _my_ … Robin.” Damian said. He shifted uneasily.

His change of tone is suddenly drastic. The world seems to tilt in the way where you feel like you’re falling… maybe a different kind of falling, though. The world seems to still, and you find that you and Damian Wayne are the only two capable of interacting. Damian’s voice drops the steadiness and formality with a sigh. When he speaks again his words are deep with intensity, his eyes staring straight into your own—not above, not below, but  _dead-center_ —and the emotion in them makes you think (or hope) that he’s going to kiss you.

Damian extended his hand,”Be my  _Batgirl_.”

You almost leap when you move, tossing your arms around his neck and breathing into his chest,” _Please_ , yes.” Damian barely stumbles, but manages to steady you both by putting his hands rigidly on your waist. You’re about to pull away when you realize he’s uncomfortable, but then you feel him relax and gingerly allow his fingertip to graze your back.

“Good.” Damian said. He makes it  _sound_ like a business transaction, but if you could see his angrily blushing face then you’d know that it certainly doesn’t  _look_ like one. But that’s not exactly what’s on your mind right now. Maybe a closer connection was needed between you and Damian for things to work out how you hoped…

Also, Selina’s face when she see’s you with a bat on your chest is going to be  _hilarious_.


	7. Balance, part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You aren’t stupid. And yes, Damian, you know what a Batarang is.

Damian holds the Batarang between his fingers, raising it inches from your nose.”Do you know what this is?” Damian asked. **  
**

“What kind of question is _that?_ ” You laughed. Lightly testing the weight of it in your palm, curling and unfurling your fingers around its body. It was lighter than you expected, but carried a dull heaviness at its center of gravity. It feels  _right_ in your grasp. It feels, as ridiculous as it sounds, like you should be holding that bat-shaped piece of metal. To be honest, maybe you did know a little too much about Batarangs. Bruce had fashioned hundreds of designs. Some had the sharpest edges, others were fat and wide, and there were the rare few made of other materials like Kryptonite. The one you now carried was sleek and thin, with a hinge in the center that allowed it to collapse and fold like a pocket knife. Needless to say, you could get used to carrying these around.

You flash Damian a smirk, before reeling back your arm and adjusting your stance, before promptly hurling it at the target. The metal  _shrings_ as it slices through the air. It embeds itself in the target’s center, and you don’t even bother trying to hide how smug you are. Damian swiftly covers how impressed he is. He raises an eyebrow as if asking,  _Where did you learn to do that?_

You proudly crossed your arms over your chest,”Remember that one time Selina and I got our hands on those  _Iris_ pearls, and you threw your Batarang and it got me in the side?” You lifted your tank top to show a jagged but barely-present scar on your torso,”Yeah. After she pulled it out of me, I practiced with it for  _weeks_.” You grinned.

Dick, who was observing from a distance and only half paying attention—mostly betting on how long it would take for you to kiss with Barbara—comments,”That’s metal.”

Damian and Barbara both shush him.

By the time you sweep over the Batcomputer by grappling line, identify each type of explosive carried in the utility belt, throw the tear gas and use the re-breather correctly, operate the batcuffs, manage to escape them (“Um, I was  _Catgirl_ , Damian. Master thief, escape artist… I’ve escaped these cuffs more times than I can count.”), then get them on  _Damian_ without his knowledge, he’s formed a reasonable conclusion.

Damian spreads his hands incredulously, standing before you as you kicked up your feet on the Batcomputer’s center console. He pushes them off then asked,”Did you  _study_ for this, L/N?”

“This is only the best job offer I’ve ever gotten,  _ever_.” You shrugged.”I’m not going to flunk the interview.”

“Fine.” Damian dismissed,”But we’re not done. We still have things to discuss.”

You stood from the chair and kicked it behind you with a flourish, sliding your hands down your thighs and then clapping them onto your hips. You met Damian’s gaze, unthreatened,” _Oooh_. Is there some secret rule between you bats that I don’t know about?”

“Let me take a guess,” You walked two fingers up Damian’s chest, over the rigid lines of his abdominals and pectorals. You watched your fingers and just how hard he has to try to ignore the feeling with a smirk.”No relationships? No kissing in costume?”

“That’s one thing,” Damian said. The _“thing”_  seemed to be your attitude more than the rules you had listed. Gently, he took your wrists and attempted to lower them so he could speak, but the reason you keep smiling is that he doesn’t release them. You slip your wrists out of his grasp and replace them with your hands. Now you are both standing there, and Damian is holding your hands and your faces are awfully close.

You want to make a flirty comment. His eyes were always green, green with maybe a bit of blue, but up close you realize you’re wrong. They’re more like hazel. A mossy moon ringed with brown during an eclipse. Those hazel eyes—more green than brown, but still—search your own and then dart around your face. They glance at your lips for just a moment. It lasts long enough for you to take note of.

“Selina was a seductress. That was her game.” Damian said, hazel’s now determined to not glance back down again. If he does, he won’t be able to resist after so much time seeing those pretty lips curve and be bitten. Your Catgirl costume covered your hair and the goggles covered your eyes, so Damian was always forced to either stare at the empty green lenses or your lips. He remembers how glossy they look in the moonlight. He remembers how they’ll still look like that if you go through with this; the Batgirl costume didn’t cover your mouth.

He continues,”But Batgirl is meant to be a force of strength and power. A  _solution_ , an  _improvisation_. If you are going to do this, then you need to be the embodiment of courage.”

“Batman is the mind. Robin is the heart.” Damian pointed to his own heart, and then pointed to your temple,”And Batgirl is the subconscious. We are all symbols. And I know you aren’t as stupid as you pretend. You’re the mind behind all of your and Selina’s operations. Be  _that_ , Y/N. Not some flirt.”

You stared at him for a duration of time that was too long to be comfortable. No wonder they called him a mini-Bruce, that could have been taken straight from the man’s  _diary_. A little dazed, you smirked,”… I’m sorry, but you just got  _super_ dramatic and I don’t speak theatrics. What, and  _where_ did that come from?”

Damian sighed. He hides an exasperated smile behind his hand as he rubs the bridge of his nose. When he finds a simplified version of his previous statement, Damian doesn’t pick up your other hand. But your left is still entwined with his right so you don’t complain.

“TT. If Batman flirted like you did in costume, then we’d have a lot more Robins.” Damian snorted.

You laughed, shaking your head and patting his arm. Slowly, the speed of the action winds down and you retract the touch.  _No flirting_ , You told yourself mentally,  _That’s Catgirls thing. You’re Batgirl now. Batgirl doesn’t flirt._

 _… Unless it’s with Robin_ , you added. Which was something you could get behind.

“Okay.” You smiled lightly,”I can—I can do that.”

Damian looks around the Batcave with a satisfied nod. He finds that it’s empty, which seems to please him. This time, it’s  _him_ who takes  _your_ hand, gently laying it between his own. They are warm and inviting, coarse and worn hands that you want to cup your face and pull you forward.

His back straightens, more seriously than before, and you find yourself copying his stance.”Y/N L/N.” He states, and you withhold the sassy  _Damian Wayne_  you want to respond with. You lay your hands on top of his, a stack up of squeezed fingers and possibilities.”Do you swear that you will never take a life, even the life of a criminal?” He asked.

You let the words weigh on you. Bleed into your skin. Bruce Wayne created and lives by this rule, even with monsters like the joker. Jason Todd ignores this rule but respects it regardless. Damian Wayne has adopted this rule, this promise, like it is the foundation of his new life… You decide to do that too.

Raising your right hand, you nod without flirtation or sarcasm. It’s the most serious Damian has ever seen you. It makes him proud.

“I swear.” You breathed.

You expect more. You expect there to be a list of  _“Do you…”_ s, followed by honorable promises of  _I swear_. There should be something along the heroic lines of putting everyone else before you, saving their life instead of your own, giving your all to the world and to Gotham City. But that’s it. That’s all there is, as everything else is implied and given. You see atonement shine in the distance like a sunrise glittering over an ocean, it’s beautiful beams stroking your skin and giving you a taste of what being a true hero is like.

Damian drops your hands and then extends his. It takes you a second to realize it’s a handshake. As that promise bleeds through you and becomes the center of your new world, you take Damian’s hand. He shakes solidly, just once. You’ve sold your soul to the people, and not yourself in the way that Selina had taught you. Damian smirked,”Welcome to the team, Batgirl.”

 _Batgirl is the subconscious_ , you tell yourself as you smile back at him. Your partner. The Robin to your Batgirl.”Thank you, Robin. Can’t wait to start.”

_

Dick told you that Robin is all about not listening to Batman. Barbara also tells you the same thing about Batgirl, except she adds,”The boys go in blindly. Don’t be a dumbass, go in with a plan.”

So when Damian’s first idea is to leap through the skylight of a jewelry-store robbery right after Bruce shouts,” _Robin—!_ ” You start to understand what Barbara meant. Bruce gives you a look that probably means _“Stay here”_ , and then you understand what Dick told you, too. Needless to say, you  _don’t_ stay there.

The costume isn’t really the first thing on your mind. It comes after the exhilarating feeling of the wind catching on a cape, hair flying behind you mid-swing, Gotham humming and blinking below you like a living human being. Then come thoughts of how tight the fabric is around your butt, and how the cape is only practical for a few things—but ah,  _screw it!_ You’re Batgirl, who gives a damn?

Bruce handles things about as smoothly as you would imagine. Damian leaps in, all force and anger (as you expected), and Bruce follows roughly but wields his skill and that roughness well. These robbers are high on a Mutant Growth Hormone, which means that Damian’s about to get a face-full of fire-breath and Bruce has an invisible foe to battle. You remember how Batgirl hasn’t trailed these two in months, and how these bad guys are going to assume the same thing. That’s another thing Barbara Gordon has taught you; don’t assume, it makes an ass out of you and me.

The suit’s pretty damn colorful, but you make it work and blend into the shadows. The alarm system works as the only light in the main room, and every time it fades there’s a two second period in which there’s no light at all. That’s two seconds for you to roll behind hiding places and two seconds to observe the area. The alarm throws off your night vision, but you make it work—with a plan, like Barbara taught you.

As you breeze through the weaker ones and work your way up, you take note of Damian’s behaviors. He’s acting more reckless than usual, and Bruce is only putting so much effort into yelling at him about it. When you fought as Catwoman and Catgirl vs Batman and Robin, Bruce had always been shouting ( _“Watch your left, Robin!”_  or, _”Eyes ahead, Robin!”_ ). He only does it in dire situations, like when one of them holds up a gun, but regardless it’s still  _odd_.

The battle-math part of your brain seeps down and connects with the oath you took, and for once you are allowed to survey the area and freely analyze. As Catgirl you had to focus on remarks and flirty comebacks, aiming your whip and scratching your claws, but  _Batgirl_ is all observation. Mostly observation anyway, as the other 90% is a full can of whoop-ass. And man, do you love unleashing it.

Bruce miraculously packed his syringes of the compound that diminishes the effects of the drug, which is odd because this had been an emergency call with no prepared warning, or knowledge of beforehand. The way Damian is moving suddenly makes sense, and you narrow your eyes.  _Oh. So that’s how it is._

The biggest guy is loaded on super strength, and the way he effortlessly tosses Bruce into one of the displays shows it. One of the syringes he’s carrying skids, and they must think that you’ve skipped out on the fight because Bruce shouts,” _Robin! The syringe!_ ”

Just as this is spoken Damian is hurled into a long rectangular series of cases for diamonds, skidding and shattering the glass as he is thrown into it. With a hiss of anger he attempts to get up, but with one smooth punch the pitcher of his toss is wiped out. You scoop up the syringe and comment smartly as you pass him,”That’s what you get for pulling your punches, Robin. Now take a break and watch the queen conquer.”

As soon as the chemical is within your grasp you break into a sprint and calculate the best as you can while running. You’ve decided to deem this enemy  _Big Bertha_ , as she has a good three feet on you in height and is a complete column of muscle. She could go toe-to-toe with Bane and win, easily. Too bad she has to go up against  _you_.

She parts her legs and growls, low and guttural like a dog. She raises her fists high above her head and brings them down, and  _hard_ , in order to hit you. You slide between her legs and land on her other side. It’s too late to stop the force of her own strike, and ends up painfully punching herself in the stomach. You kick off one of the other displays and launch onto her back, slicing the needle’s tip into her wrought-iron skin and pressing the antidote into her bloodstream. You hike your feet up on her shoulders and lurch for the chandelier.

With the most amount of badassery you are capable of, you kick her backward mid-swing and flip. When you land solidly in the center of the room, the chandelier is swaying above you and Bruce and Damian are finally standing. You hear her moan and collapse, a giant shuddering smash into marble, and finally understand why Iron Man looks so  _bitchin_ ’ in the movies. Only this time instead of an explosion erupting behind you, a giant falls effortlessly and you don’t even bother to spare Big Bertha a glance.

Without warning, you break into another run. There is one last enemy standing. The man shudders on the opposite side of the room as you meet eyes, and practically embraces pain when you flip, wrapping your legs around his neck and bringing him to the floor with a mighty battle-cry.

When the sound echoes and dies within the space, you are standing and the alarms are still blaring. Damian looks at you, a little dazed and blushing harder than you’ve ever seen him blush. Bruce looks between the two of you. When he glances at Damian he looks at his son like he’s just made the best choice possible. When he looks at you, he looks expectant.

You shouldered your cape behind your back and pant,”Is that what you call a  _test?_ ”

Now, Bruce looks impressed, even if he’s hiding it. He barely smirked,”What gave us away, Batgirl?”

You list off everything that seemed remotely suspicious; Bruce’s preparedness, Damian’s reckless attitude, and then you glance up at the security cameras and give a wave.”Also, hey guys. You know it’s impolite to stalk someone through cameras, right?”

Bruce looks at Damian.  _Please, for the love of god, marry her._

Damian looks at Bruce.  _I plan to._

“Well done, Y/N.” Damian congratulated. Before you can crack a joke about his sudden politeness, something sharp and metallic clatters against the marble. At once, your trio spins to face the sound.

Selina Kyle hangs from her whip, claws previously holding the largest diamond apart of the collection, now empty as it skids across the floor with her surprise. She looks between the three of you, wide-eyed. Then her eyes land on your chest, where that big, beautiful bat you used to dread seeing is emblazoned. Before she can get out her surprised _,”Y/N…?”_  she loses her grip on her wire and tumbles into the display case.

Damian crosses his arms smugly and he and Bruce join you, standing above the woman. Damian gestured to Catwoman, your previous mentor. He grins,”Would you like to do the honors, Batgirl?”

You pull a pair of Batcuffs from your utility belt—not  _Batgirl’s_ , but  _yours_ —and displayed them,”I wouldn’t have it any other way, my lovely boy wonder.”

You unlocked the cuffs and looked down at Selina. Her smirk grows sly, and she extends her wrists. She’s proud of you. Unapologetic for the argument, but still  _proud_.”Fine, batbrat,” Selina spits playfully,” _Cuff me._ ”

“With pleasure.” You,  _Batgirl_ ,  _Damian’s_ Batgirl, grinned,”Selina Kyle, you’re under arrest…”


	8. Balance, the prequel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of the many things that set you and Selina apart was the strict difference in moral focus; Selina did everything she did for herself and the rare few close to her, while you did what you did for the people, even if only certain people knew that.

Bruce said to keep an eye on her, just in case her activities at Gotham Academy weren’t strictly academic. The task was easy enough; no one questioned when his eyes followed her form around the room, as most thought that he just had a crush. But Damian Wayne didn’t have a crush on Y/N L/N—AKA the thief  _Catgirl_ —and he never would.

It is a little surprising, just how normal your life is. You had friends at your school. None of which knew your identity, as no one in the school beside him and you did. You were a dedicated student, something that Damian wasn’t shocked by. You always seemed to be more intelligent than you let on during your battles, especially in the little ways you tricked him, and the home-made gadgets he’d find when he tried to arrest you. Emphasis on the word  _tried_. Often, you were too fast or too clever, and he would make the mistake of underestimating you. Damian doesn’t know that he’s making this mistake at this very moment.

The bell chimes and your teacher dismisses the class. You are one of the last to leave, collecting your binder and pencil case, running your tongue over your lips as you reviewed that day’s lesson in your mind. Damian’s eyes are automatically drawn to the action. You smile and take off to your locker, and he swallows absentmindedly as your long legs disappear around the corner.

Okay, so maybe he did have a little bit of a crush on you—no, no, that’s not the right word… he was certainly attracted to you, for he’s felt those lips against his own, ran his hands down and around those hips, sought the touch of those claws. These memories only seem to romanticize your presence, as Damian is sure the uniform skirt isn’t as short as your gorgeous legs make them out to be. He growled at himself for staring and rushed over to return his books to his locker; he had P.E. next, the class in which his skills were the most valuable—your skills too, meaning this class is the only possible way of uncovering your real identity. For no one “without  training” could hit a ball so hard or fold their body that way.

Lately, he had taken to noticing that you seemed off. Your smile never quite met your eyes, and you had stopped participating in class. He immediately informed his father when he demanded a regular update on the villain, and Bruce mentioned that Selina had said you were going through a “funk that you couldn’t quite shake”. With some digging, Damian knew what this   
“funk” was.

One of the many things that set you and Selina apart was the strict difference in moral focus; Selina did everything she did for herself and the rare few close to her, while you did what you did for the people, even if only certain people knew that.

“ _Y’know, I’m the one out of the two of us who should really be called “Robin”,_ ” You told him,” _Because I steal from the rich and give to the poor. Like Robin Hood._ ”

Damian could admire that in you. The best way to catch you after a heist was to find you on the streets of the Narrows, handing out stolen jewels and valuables to the families that needed it. Selina usually scolded you, claiming that you should have kept your winnings, but you never could. It didn’t seem right, but thievery was your only way to be Catgirl. And Catgirl was your outlet, your escape from reality and into the fantasy world you had always wanted to live in. Damian could understand that—he never felt quite  _him_ out of costume.

But on one of your more recent heists, you and Selina had done the dangerous job of stealing from the Joker. While Selina was never one to stick her neck out, or steal something if it could get her in Joker-level trouble, this case was an exception. Selina’s young friend Holly had mentioned that those were his jewels, and that they were stolen because of Holly. Her boss claimed he would kill her if she didn’t get those gems back, so you and Selina set out to protect her.

But  _Joker_  always complicated things, and a silent robbery turned into a full-scale two vs. twenty in a warehouse on Gotham’s docks, one where you recklessly leaped back into danger to save some of Joker’s hostages. Selina was furious that you’d expose yourself in such a manner, even if you saved a few lives. You’d gotten shot in the shoulder for it, and worst of all one of the girls had been taken down in the resulting gunfire. Even if you didn’t know her, the girl’s death had put you into a “funk”. A funk that everyone seemed to be blaming you for.

Damian could see it on your face now, as you exited the girl’s gym locker and jogged to join your friends on the bleachers. Your suddenly upbeat attitude was executed perfectly; none of the girls suspected you were mourning a stranger, a stranger that might not have died if you didn’t take action. Should you have still saved them? Would they be alive even if you didn’t? Damian recognized your tells, like how you paused a little longer when you talked and drummed your fingers on your knee. Things you did as Catgirl when you flirted with him. Things you did when you were acting, playing a part.

Your teacher announces the rare “free day”, in which everyone scatters. Your group of friends had been roped into a game of volleyball by one of the male players (read as: sexist asshole), who insisted that you play  _boys vs girls_ , laughing about how easy this game would be won because they were playing against “pansies”. Damian saw the shine in your eyes, the  _challenge_ ricocheting around your mind, and immediately volunteered to join the game. As the boys around him rejoiced (Damian’s reputation as a badass was well-known and almost infamous, even if they were unaware he was Robin), you stared at one another through the squares of the net.

You didn’t dare break your gaze from his as you [tied back your hair/brushed your hair out of your face], dropping your hands to your sides and then doing something that Damian didn’t expect; you smiled like you knew everything about him, before turning to the girls and announcing a group-huddle. With you as their unofficial team captain, Damian was excited to see the sexist assholes around him put to justice. But he was also excited to dance as Y/N L/N and Damian Wayne. You’d fought as Catgirl and Robin, but never as civilians. Hmm.

Derek DeClairy, the boy’s most decent player, furrowed his brows and observed the girls forming a game plan on the other side of the net. ”Should we…?”

“Don’t bother.” Asshole McGee, or Michael Tank, clapped a hand on Derek’s shoulder. He flashed a cocky grin, ”We got this. Just call it… playing on easy mode.”

“TT.” Damian clicked his tongue. He felt like insulting all of them, but his confidence in your victory had grown by the minute; you were a literal criminal, hiding among them, someone who ran from the police and  _Batman and Robin_  every night. If you didn’t win, Damian was picking a new villain… or more accurately, a new attraction.

But it wasn’t just you on your team who posed a silent threat. There was Sara Thomas, or the girl who everyone referred to as  _Calamity_ , and he assumed she was about to live up to that title. Then Leto Monroe, Y/N’s best friend who definitely was at least  _suspicious_ of your nighttime activities. She was too smart, too strategic to go unmentioned. Then Tia, who’s last name Damian didn’t know, but he felt that it was something important. She was the tallest of them and held the most advantage with this trait. The other girls who Damian hadn’t acknowledged flocked around her, smiling and laughing, mostly in the game for that day’s grade in P.E. Still, his eyes kept coming back to you.

Derek nudged him and murmured,”Get your head in the game, man. I know Y/N’s pretty, but we got a game to win.”

“She’s not pretty.” Damian scowled at him. Derek only shook his head,”The way you keep staring at her legs in those shorts says that you think otherwise.”

When the ball was finally tossed into one of the boy’s hands, Leto stood up to the net and listed off the rules. As she and one of the debate team members began to argue over how they should play, Michael served the ball abruptly, sending it sailing overhead and just shy of the boundary line. Before it could hit the floor, Tia dove for it and struck it high above the net. The boys scrambling together as it rocketed with gravity’s pull, and eventually, they entered a game with unclear rules and multiple unprofessional students.

Without moving from his place on the gym floor, Damian boredly raised his hands and set the ball over the net. Taking this as a personal challenge and an opportunity of some kind, you hollered,” _Mine!_ ” Then you struck the ball back over the net. But Damian found the fire in his body steadily growing as she grinned back at him. It was too good to resist, so suddenly his body was in motion and the ball was darting straight for you. With a powerful blow you sent it flying back to him with the grace of Superman over Metropolis, knees bent, position perfect, gaze alight with your fighting responses.

Damian struck it back, and you had only seconds to admire the way his muscles pulled with his movement, strong arms spiking the ball into your court, fists balled and _oh so_ familiar. While for him this had been a chance to see how you performed in civies, this was your chance to identify you always caught staring. And you were proved correct when your game of bat and mouse only increased in its intensity. Soon you were hitting with all you had, diving to save the ball, allowing no other team members to even graze it. Halfway through they had backed out of the court. Damian saw all of the boys and girls surveying their interactions from the sidelines, and then the gym teacher, watching the ball bounce from one court to the next. Awed by the competitiveness and the skill of the two players before her, she confessed just how impressed she was with a hum.

Damian knew that soon the other players would get suspicious of something, but he just can’t seem to defeat you. To make matters worse, you look utterly  _gorgeous_  so worn out, and he can’t help but fantasize; that thoroughly, pleasantly  _worked_ expression you’re wearing is his doing. Oh, how he wished it could be on different terms in a different place, with your naked body beneath his, panting and moaning his name, whispering your love for him, begging him to keep touching you—

It was too late for him to move, too late for him to strike it back, so all he could do was catch the ball before it hit his face. In response to the action the girls cheered, embracing and yelling things like,” _That’s my girl! That’s my best friend!_ ” And then running up to you and wailing,” _You’re a goddamn QUEEN, Y/N._ ”

Meanwhile, the boys groaned and began to huff and scold him, but he still couldn’t believe himself. Did he really get so distracted by your arms, and how they would wrap around his neck and pull him close—and there he goes again!  _What is wrong with you, Damian?_  He questioned himself.  _You never thought about her this way, not since—_

And then it comes to Damian in a rush of clarity, and he wished that you had done something like drug him, or brain-wash him. But no. All you did was kiss him, and it’s that kiss that ignites these thoughts. Damian hates how their not all entirely sexual too, but  _romantic_. He’d be lying to himself if he said that he didn’t imagine your fingers delicately stroking his face, or kissing him, or embracing him, supplying  _affection_. All because of one damn kiss that happened a month ago.

_“Hmm.” You murmured, watching him cuff your wrists through the tinted lenses of your goggles. Damian only grunted. Your face was getting closer to his, and when you tilted your head to the side, he felt it instead of saw it. Then you smiled devilishly and asked,”Are you a good kisser, Robin?”_

_“No.” Damian responded flatly, pulling you to a stand and beginning to confiscate your utility belt and night-vision gear. When he pulled your goggles from your face you were still smirking, but this time he could see that you were admiring his lips, which automatically parted in response to the attention. He closed them tightly. Even if he was a good kisser—which was a lie, he was a damn **amazing** kisser, because he was amazing_  _at everything—he’d never give you the satisfaction of knowing… no matter how much he wanted to._

_“I find that hard to believe, my beloved boy wonder,” You whispered, holding his chin between your fingers and still studying his mouth. He hated how he wasn’t uncomfortable with this. When your gaze lifted to his mask, you waited for a quip and yet never received one. Slowly, you wound your cuffed hands around his neck and neared your faces. He knew you were just going to escape again, he knew that you were probably picking the locks on those cuffs, but Damian could only growl at himself, tugging you forward by the hips and kissing you with everything he had… Which was certainly a lot._

_The way you sighed into his mouth, almost dreamily, made Damian never want to pull away. He hated himself for it. He hated himself for letting you get away that night. He also hated himself for realizing that there was something in that kiss, and_ something  _that isn’t sexual or a distraction tactic._

So now, when you stick out your hand, Damian doesn’t accept it nor shake it. You smile, expecting this reaction,”Good game.”

Damian could only grunt in response. But curiosity inches it’s way up Damian’s spine when you gesture for him to lean down. When he does, you rise on your toes to whisper in his ear and slip a piece of paper into his hand,”Cats  _eat_ birds, Damian Wayne.”

Your words rocket straight to his core, and it falls into place. Hmm. So this wasn’t just a game. You had made it into a test, studied his body language, and identified him. He smirks,”Smart girl.”

You distance yourself from him, casting him nothing but the same glance you had given before; all-knowing, and liking what you now know. Something that isn’t flirtatiously  _Catgirl_ , but intelligently Y/N L/N. He’s starting to realize he likes both, but at the moment Y/N L/N is making his heart pound recklessly.

“Oh, and Damian?” You called before you returned to your group of friends. Damian raised his head from the note you had passed him, letting a smirk slip onto his face when you point to your lips and tell him,”I would recognize those lips of yours  _anywhere_.”

Your friends and a few of the boys overhear, but you dismiss their murmured and gossiped reactions, turning on your heel and proudly returning to your friends. They swarm you, and Damian distinctly hears what must be an incredulous Leto,” _You_  kissed  _Damian Wayne?_ ”

Damian likes Catgirl, he’s always known that even if he’ll never confess it. But he’s beginning to like Y/N L/N a lot more…

___

_Meet me at the Gotham Clock Tower, 10 o’clock tonight._ The note requests. It adds,  _out of costume,_  but it’s been erased like you guessed he wouldn’t listen and come in full-Robin gear. It’s signed with your initials, and of course, three rough lines crossing over them; three claw marks. Damian scoffed.

When Damian arrives, he half-expects something more dramatic than what he gets. You sat there, looking out over Gotham City and playing with the edges of your jacket. The wind must shift or you really do have a cat’s senses, as you turn your cheek and glanced back at Damian with his silent entrance. Pressing yourself up from your feet, you confidently put your hands in your pockets and nodded,”I should have figured you’d come in full costume.”

“You did,” Damian responded, clipping his grappling gun to his belt and raising the note between two fingers. He is almost… unnerved, by your sureness, as there is something lying beneath it. Confusion? Desire? Anger? He can’t pinpoint what you’re thinking, and it’s making his gaze narrow and his brows to quirk.”Now, why did you call me here?”

“ _Alright then, straight to business…_ ” You murmured sarcastically. Then, hesitantly, you explained,”I wanted to talk to you.”

Hesitance. Submissive body stance. Hiding your hands. Blushing face. You’re nervous or embarrassed, and it thrills Damian to know that he is the cause. He pulls his hood from his hair so you can see the smirk on his face,”Oh? So this isn’t a booty-call?”

“Ha. Please.” You scoffed, crossing your arms over your chest. He notices a rectangular item stored in the interior pockets of your jacket, and assumes that’s why you’re here. You then glanced to the side, down at the city as the air stroked your face and carded through your hair.”I only…  _flirted_ with you so you knew it was me. Catgirl.”

Damian hums, following your stare to the lights of the city. He returns his gaze to yours and tries to stifle all the comments arising to the surface of his mind; you look beautiful, with your hair fluttering around your face in Gotham’s high breeze, your body relaxing with a sigh.

“So you’re not always that teasing, out of costume?” Damian questioned.

You snorted,”Yeah. But I’m pretty sure you know the answer to that question, Mr. Stalker.”

 _So you_  do  _know_ , Damian thought. He frowned distastefully upon recognizing the emotion stirring in his chest. He’s impressed. Not stunned, not shocked, but impressed. Of course, you realized he was observing you. Of course, you took note of his own behavior and recognized that he had a reason that wasn’t just an over-bearing crush. Of course, you knew it was  _him_. Because Y/N L/N is a lot more clever than Catgirl perceives and portrays her to be.

“TT. Batman only has me run surveillance on you so we know you aren’t up to something.” Damian huffed.

“This time, I’m not.” You quipped in response, and then fished through your jacket and produced the rectangular object from before. A long yellow mail parcel, sealed with a pin, and marked with a label that had been smudged by rainwater.  _CASE FILE_. Silently, awkwardly, you extended it to him. As you spoke, Damian pulled back the pin and thumbed through its contents.

“Ivy gave me an’ Selina a job offer a few months back. A weed and exotic mushroom operation, except this kind of stuff did a lot more than just take you to cloud 9.” You said. Inside the package were multiple half-folded files and a few pictures. Damian retrieved a small plastic bag that could fit in his palm from the parcel. You continued.”It’s something big. Selina couldn’t do it because she and Ivy were arguing at the time and it never really came up again. I wanted to go in and bust the operation when it starts, but there are too many people on the payroll for just me to take-down. I figured you and Bats could handle it. There’s a sample I managed to steal in there, along with the files that Ivy sent us. Besides, if Selina finds out that I betrayed Ivy like this, she’d kill me.”

Maybe you were more “good guy” that Damian thought. He enclosed the sample inside the parcel and tucked it into his utility belt, nodding to you in thanks. He debated if he should tell Bruce if it was you who got him this information, because if it ever leaked to Selina you would be dead meat… but Bruce had to know, just as Damian now knew, that you weren’t all thievery. You didn’t want to be the thief Catgirl. You wanted to be the hero.

“I’ll tell Batman,” Damian promised,”… But I will make sure that Selina remains unaware.”

“Thank you.” You breathed gratefully. You hugged yourself in the cold, peering over the edge of the building, trying to avoid his masks’ empty staring. Damian gave it emotion by smirking, crinkling the edges of one side. Quietly, he clicked his tongue.”TT. Are you sure that you’re really Selina’s partner?”

You could only shrug in response, your smile was only partially real. Damian is landed in silence, which goes on long enough to be just shy of concerning, before you cast him a glance,”Can I… can I ask you for some advice, Damian?”

Damian’s smirk dropped abruptly. Ha. Like he was ever a good person to ask for advice. But it made him feel wise and… respected, to hear such a request. So he nodded and stoically listened as you exhaled. It was a soft, shaky sound, which blurred with the wind and went unheard by anyone that wasn’t shoulder-to-shoulder with you, as he now was.

“Have you ever… done something, where you think that you’re doing the right thing, but everyone around you thinks differently, and then something happens to prove that maybe you were wrong?”

“Maybe not that specific, but… yes.” Damian found himself admitting. He crossed his arms over his chest and watch your expression, how the muscles in your face were relaxed by Gotham’s lights, but then drawn taut with your question. Too many times had he thought that  _his_ way of life was the  _right_ way, and too many times had Bruce shown him how the opposite was better, was true. It was the possibly the most challenging and brave thing he would ever do; reject everything he was taught from birth and start anew, his foundation a set of better morals.  _Justice_ , he can hear Bruce and Dick remind him,  _not vengeance._

“Well… what did you do then? Did you… listen to everyone else? Did you continue thinking what you were thinking?” You asked him.

Damian remained quiet. You could almost hear the gears clicking in his mind, his brain like a humming, oiled machine. Damian guessed,”Joker’s hostages. The girl.”

You breathed another shaky, broken sigh, like something caught and rattling in an air conditioner. Slowly, you bobbed your head and brushed your hair out of your face, attempting to hide just how hard you wanted to scream and sob. You would give that life for that girl. You would take everything back.

“I… I tried to save them all.” You whispered.”But you and Batman were already on your way, and Selina just wanted to run and to leave them, and I thought that maybe they could last just a few more minutes—” You inhaled sharply as the tears came full force,”I tried to get them out. I tried to get them  _all_ out, but then they came in and she was shot and I—”

You buried your face in your hands, and the pure humanity of the action is startling.  _This_ is the Y/N L/N that Damian has always wanted to meet. With her beating heart, her love for the people. You stole for them. You risked your life for them. In your own right, you were a hero. And maybe this is when Damian begins to trust you.

But he stands there, awkwardly observing, and somehow finds the courage to lay his hand on your back. The action is all he can give and you know that, so you lean back into the comfort and silently hope that he doesn’t disappear on you. Damian would understand. At least he understood.

“You did the right thing, even if Selina, and Ivy, and whoever else says otherwise.” Damian said—no,  _promised_.”You saved the others. Selina didn’t even want to try, but you ran in and you did. You  _tried_. And sometimes that’s all we can do.”

“What I did,” Damian begins,”Is believe in the wrong thing for too long. But this, for you, is the right thing. And you have to clutch that belief with everything you possess, because one day it might be the last thing you have.”

You nodded steadily, sniffling and rubbing the heels of your palms into your watery eyes. You laughed wetly,”God, Damian. Just write a book.”

Damian felt his cheeks urging his lips to lift, and for once, he doesn’t push down the urge. His thumb strokes your back once and then abandons it, and when you turn to face Damian he is smiling softly at you. You breathed in shakily, trying not to throw your arms around him and beg him to stay for at least a little while longer. Being  _Catgirl_ forever labeled you to most of the people in Gotham—even other criminals—as someone who was immoral and stole for only herself. Only people who received your gifts knew that you were, somehow, one of the good guys. Damian Wayne now knew that too. Selina was furious that you would ever put yourself in danger for someone who wasn’t family, who wasn’t close. But Damian did that same thing every day and night, and that realization is maybe what urges you to start trusting him too.

“Now,” Damian said as you put his beautiful smile to memory. It curled into the smirk that was getting more and more familiar, the smirk that you wanted and have had against your lips. He raised an eyebrow,”Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.” You said.

Now that smirk stretched into what you could only deem a  _bat-grin_ , filling your belly with a foreign but pleasant feeling, one that worried you; that grin was too mischievous for your liking. Damian unhooked his grappling gun from his belt,”Do you think I’m a good kisser?”

You felt your face grow hot and your hand absentmindedly touch your neck. The action did the exact opposite of hide your embarrassment, as Damian has studied female body language for too long to not know what that means.  _She likes me_ , He thought smugly. The strong, capable and confident young woman before him raises her head suddenly. Her blush remains but her awkwardness disappears, and this isn’t Catgirl coming out to play, but another side of you that Damian liked just as much—if not more. The Y/N that smiled at him dangerously through the net of the volleyball court. You gently prodded the  _R_ on his heart,”… I’ll tell you when you’ve stopped the bad guy.” You bargained.

Damian tapped the file you’d given him,”According to these documents, it’s bad guy _ **s**_. Plural.”

Your eyes narrowed at him, puffy from the brief crying period, and Damian scowls at his thoughts; you look  _cute_. Adorable and threatening. You pointed at him accusingly and huffed for correcting you,”I hate you.”

Damian can’t help himself. You’ve teased him with those beautiful eyes, the lips he’d dreamt of kissing, those legs he so badly wants to wrap around his waist. But his control is almost too strong, and he manages to subdue the urge to cup your face and dip you into the greatest kiss you’ll ever have. Instead, he smirks annoyingly,”TT. Glad to hear it.”

* * *

“You and Y/N did good work out there, Damian. You work well together.” Bruce commented. He studied his son’s face carefully, watching every quirk and observing every submovement that his son didn’t realize he was making. But Damian used a childhood full of training to hide how he reacted to the praise, and he looked away,”… Thank you, father. I’m sure L/N would be elated to hear this.”

“Speaking of that…” Bruce cast a glance to Dick and Barbara as they interacted. Barbara commented on something as Dick pushed her into the Batcave, and Dick bowled over laughing in response. Bruce returned his gaze to his uniform-clad son, taking Damian’s domino mask by the edge and peeling it off his face,”I was thinking about you finding a partner, Damian.”

“But you’re my partner,” Damian responded quicker than usual. He didn’t want to be replaced, and if Bruce meant that he was firing him… Bruce shook his head,”Not that kind of partner,” He glanced again at Dick and Barbara,”… Exactly, anyway.”

“Then who? Are you suggesting that we hire another Robin?” Damian scoffed. He gestured to the other people in the cave,”There is  _plenty_ to go around if you haven’t noticed.”

Bruce sighed, trying to make sense of his own thoughts. He urged Damian to pull over another one of the chairs at the console, and his son wheeled over with masked worry. He already had people like Dick and Tim to compete with—well, mostly Tim—and adding another person to the bunch never meant anything good for Damian.

“Do you know how Barbara and Dick worked together? Or Tim and Stephanie?” Bruce inquired.

”Yes. Batgirl and Robin. What, you’ve found another fat-girl?” He scoffed.

“No, Damian.” Bruce rubbed his eyes with his free hand, and when they opened to meet Damian’s, the clouded blues were conquered by something exasperated and yet gentle in a fatherly way.” _You’re_ going to find another  _Bat-_ girl. I figured that it would be a good way for you to learn how to work better with others.”

Damian caught himself before he could make a rude retort,”…  _I_  get to choose?”

“Within reason, yes.” Bruce nodded.

Damian thought it over. There were plenty of people he could choose for such a position, some horrible, some tolerable, and some… in between. He looked to the costume hung in its display case, and out of these dozens of people one stuck out. He could see her in that costume, smiling back at him. (Damian could also feel her hand reach out to stroke his face, and he could see her lips form the words,”I love you,”). Another voice that isn’t hers or Bruce’s cuts through his thoughts and Talia Al Ghul is whispering in his ear.

_“She’s powerful and strong, like a queen. Do not lose her to your enemies.”_

“Pennyworth, prepare my suit and the limousine.” Damian leaped up with a start, untying the laces on his boots and rushing past his father and to Alfred. Simultaneously, he produced his phone and checked his text messages. When her location was confirmed, Damian began to pull apart the rest of his armor.

“Where are you going?” Bruce questioned rapidly; Damian seemed almost uncharacteristically  _excited_. So excited it showed on his face, which was concerning for the father of a usually-assholish ex-assassin.

Damian hooked his jacket from the back of his chair and smirked at his father,”I have a party to attend and a question to ask a recently-free girl.” Proudly, Damian turned on his heel,”Upon my return, expect a new Batgirl and a possibly furious Selina Kyle.”


	9. She Made Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You have a mission. Damian has one too, but it doesn’t involve you.

It hurt to breathe. Every time you inhaled came the sting of iron and the smoke, clawing up your throat in its descent into your bleeding lungs. You felt like you were running through mud with how heavy your legs were. They were aching with a pain you barely processed in your desperation, but when had any of that pain registered? There was only terror rooted in the deepest part of your being, it’s icy tendrils freezing your thoughts, but never deterred you from your mission even if your body was cut to oblivion and a battle was rocking the Earth beneath you.

You weren’t part of this battle. You knew you never would be, not in the way that the Justice League was. It was only smoke and smog for miles in the evacuated city of Gotham, sharp blasts of red and flying bodies slicing through the clouds and the fire. The only clarity you had was your mission, and even it’s source was starting to blur. You could scarcely recall Diana being thrown through two buildings, and Bruce shaking you from your shock and demanding you get to the chapel where Damian and Jon were.

“Talia has Damian,” Bruce said. His voice was coarse and impossibly level-headed in the middle of such a disaster. You had always seen Clark as a force of good, but today had taught you that good could be manipulated and washed away with the power of Talia Al Ghul’s latest brainwashing technology. As the Man of Steel tore apart your city, the Justice League barely holding against him and the League of Assassin’s forces, Bruce commanded,”You have to get to him before he makes this all worse. Before he can’t reverse what he’s done. I know you can fix this, Y/N. There has to be a way.”

That leads to you running. Running far, away from the ringing cries of war and pain. You ducked under the arch of the entry garden, falling against the crusted metal and panting. When had this even begun? How did Talia even accomplish this? Why  _Damian?_ Because she knew if she got a hold of Jon, Clark could possibly break him out of it and end her plans? Because she knew he couldn’t hurt Damian?  _Wouldn’t_ hurt Damian? There’s no time to contemplate. You start running again, and sometimes you feel that’s all you ever do.

The chapel is crumbled. The entire East wing lays in ruin, flooded by broken plumbing and deserted in darkness. It’s just a corpse of the beautiful building it once was, and you step over its bones in order to reach the main hall, the one intact piece of a place so undeserving of this torture. You wince when your steps echo on the crumbling marble. But your foot catches on the thick fissure under the main archway, scraping your hands for the fourth time when you fall. When you look up, there is a blinding green glow.

“Damian, this isn’t you,” Jon said. He slowly dragged himself backward, a fine trail of crimson tracing his path. He clutched a deep wound on his side, but his other hand was raised toward his best friend, welcoming instead of defending. His uniform had been torn, the crest of the House of El on his chest crossed out by a blade and leaving a gloss of staining blood down his chest. His eyes shone green against the long Kryptonite blade held against him.

“Nonsense, Kent,” Damian said Jon’s last name as he always had, sharpening the  _t_  as he always did, like nothing was wrong and you were all just hanging around under the tree behind Jon’s house. Damian loosely swung at Jon, barely missing his collarbones and sending the boy another drag backward. Then, he planted a boot on Jon’s chest and pressed the tip of the sword over his heart. He slowly pressed it deeper into Jon’s skin, smirking smugly to himself at the scream torn from the throat of his companion,”I’m more  _‘me’_  than I’ve ever been.”

“Damian,” You gasped, scrambling to your feet. At the sound of your voice, Damian flinched, but shook off the sudden wave of emotion and pulled the blade’s tip from Jon’s chest. Superboy let out a shuddery, half-sobbing breath that wasn’t nearly as strong as you would have hoped. You dropped down to your throbbing knees and held the side of Jon’s face worriedly.

“Are you alright? Are you okay?” You asked, smoothing his blood-crusted bangs out of his face. His skin burned beneath your touch, but you kept it there when Jon welcomed the touch of your warm skin.

“You need to leave, you need to go,” He choked, grabbing your wrist and weakly pushing your hand from his face,”It’s not safe. It’s not safe, it’s not safe.  _Please_.”

“Beloved,” Damian said. You turned to look at him, hands shaking and vision blurring with tears. When you stood up he backed away, growling low in his throat. While Jon had been practically torn apart, there was not even a bruise on Damian; Jon had refused to hurt him. You were going to do the same. Even if his nickname for you had suddenly turned your blood to ice, numbing your transparent thoughts and turning the world dark, you couldn’t. He had once said it with so much care, with the hesitance and nervousness of the teenage boy he was. But this was all Talia’s influence.

“Damian,” You stood on wobbly legs. When you spread your arms to protect Jon from him, his expression flashed with an unhidable pain,”Damian, baby, please. Jon’s right— this isn’t you. You have to come back to me.”

“Don’t call me  _baby_ ,” He suddenly spat, lurching forward so you were almost nose to nose. It was an attempt to scare you. But you held steady even if you were quaking like the earth, and wiped your tears with shaking hands. His words ring through the empty hall, laden with broken pews and a cracked alter. They made the ache in your heart so much worse. It felt like it was trying to claw out of your chest, sawing through the confines of your ribcage and tearing through your skin.

He growled,”You’re just scared because you knew this was how I  _always_ was, all along. Cold-hearted, unlovable, doomed-to-destroy-us-all  _Damian Al Ghul_. So now you’re jumping right into Jon’s arms because you’ve finally got the chance. I knew you always liked him more. You  _always_ have.”

“That’s not true,” You said calmly, brows furrowing and voice dropping to that tender whisper he had fallen for,”I love you, Damian  _Wayne_. And I never thought any of that of you, because this—” You gestured to him,”—is not who you are. You care, whether you show it or not, about  _everyone_. Talia’s taken that away from you. You have to fight to get it back.”

You looked deep into his eyes, staring past the mask and straight at the Damian screaming inside his mind,  _Don’t hurt her! Don’t touch her!_ You began to plead.”I know you’re in there. The  _real_ you; who would never hurt Jon, or me, or anyone. You can  _fight this_. You can. She’s  _brainwashing_ you.”

“No, she isn’t,” Damian said lowly, but faltered as your words began to slip through his cracks. Your faces were still close.”I am an Al Ghul. This is my truth. This is what I was destined to do. And if you ever thought you were apart of that destiny, then you are but a  _child_ with a  _foolish dream_.”

You balled your fists and fought your instinct to look away from him, biting your lip to bind the sob working its way out of your mouth. But you wouldn’t give in. Talia had already gotten Clark, and now she needed her son to help her get that sick “better world” Ra’s had always strived for. A “better world” like the world outside, set aflame by war and strangled by smoke. Fine, let her have that. You didn’t care. But she would not take him away from you.

Carefully, you outstretched your hand. The silence wasn’t quiet at all. A battle still raged in the distance, buildings still fell, and even then the smoke was still whistling through the old chapel and throttling the old air. Jon’s breath was an uneven, blood-choked sound behind you, only focussed on staying awake. You didn’t have much time. That unearthly glow of green Kryptonite flooded the darkness, illuminating your faces. Your fingers gently, ever so slowly, ran from his jaw to his cheek, palmed the skin and traced the thick line of his cheekbone.

“You are my dream,” you promised, voice shuddering where the hand against his face now didn’t.

His fingers rose to wrap around yours. His expression was hard and dark, fixed and knotted like he was fighting off a sickness within himself. His grip was the same way, tight and knotted and desperate. Damian’s lips twisted into a sad and bitter smile,”I would have taken the stars out of the sky if you asked me to. Made the rain stop falling.”

“But that is over,” He whispered,”You aren’t apart of my mission. And from now on, you never will be.”

“Don’t talk like that. You can fight this. And then we’ll get Jon patched up, throw the sword away, and go home. Okay?” With how he reacted to your hand, you assumed that something more would help. Your heart still beats and ached wildly. You wondered how his was. If Jon could hear it, if it was steady, if it was scared. You suddenly yearned for the nights where you would fall asleep listening to it, that steady and unwavering pulse lulling you into slumber as his fingers brushed your hair.

You laid your other hand on the other side of his face as if dealing with a startled creature of the wild. His hand remained on yours, but he did not drop the sword. You guided a smile to your face, hoping and praying that this was all working, that he was sinking back into himself again. Before you pressed your smile against his, you said with a playful tone,”And then we can pull all the stars from the sky together.”

The kiss isn’t brief. It lasts for what feels like millennia, your tears falling freely down to your lips and mixing with his taste. Somewhere in between his knuckles down to card down your arm and back up again, soothing in action tender in manner. When you break apart it feels as if the connection has simmered back again. When you whisper in his ear, it feels like Talia’s influence has left him entirely,”I love you, Damian Wayne,” You promised against the shell of his ear,”Now come back to me.”

You are wrong.

Damian turns so you’re eye to eye, E/C to jade, soul to soul, heart to heart. His free hand palms your back as he whispers in return,”I loved you too. But you aren’t apart of my mission.”

Something horrible sounds, like an arrow being slid into mud. You immediately feel the blood rush up into your mouth, the white-hot pain of your heart clenching, your body seizing and falling into his. Jon’s scream is deafening, echoing in the empty expanse and tearing at his throat. You choke on your words and the crimson when the pain finally registers. It courses through every nerve in your body, tearing them limb from limb in a sudden jolt of horror, and you know what’s happened because that look in Damian’s eyes is gone and replaced with nothing but regret.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—I didn’t want to—I—she—” Damian dissolves onto the floor, cradling your body tight to his chest. He looks at the blood on his hands, at the wound in your stomach and the sword glowing in the darkness and  _doesn’t know what to do_. He murmurs and gasps your name between forceful sobs, kicking the sword away and burying his face in your chest, chanting over and over again,  _no no no, please, please no._

“Beloved, beloved—I’m sorry,” Damian whimpered helplessly,” She made me. She made me. I love you, please, don’t leave. Don’t leave me.”

And suddenly Jon’s there, the glow of the Kryptonite a blur of green somewhere far off. You want to speak and you want to yell, but there’s too much blood in your throat and your lungs. There’s too much blood. There’s too much blood.

You remember with a clarity your parents. How Damian said  _I love you_ , forming the words so sweet and tenderly, all touch and words and sound. How Jon screamed, earth-shaking and terrified, for once powerless and unable to do anything. He’s too wounded. Damian’s still shaking off Talia’s influence. You remember running, and you’re trying to run toward them, but the floor is breaking apart beneath you and your legs are too heavy.

There’s too much blood.


	10. Critiquing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damian's latest design for the Batsuit needs some critiquing...

“Damian,” You sighed. Your voice echoed in the Batcave.” _No_.”

His brow furrows, lips twisting into a frustrated frown. You’re both bent over the Batcomputer’s center console, shoulder-to-shoulder with one of his hands resting on your lower back. It is a small way of convincing you to agree with his choices—Damian has never been afraid of coercing answers and agreements out of you with touch. He knew for a damn fact that he could stroke your face or rub your knuckles and make you giddy with adoration. This time it wouldn’t work.  _Couldn’t_ work, because nothing could change your opinion on this.

“Why? What’s wrong with it?”

You gesture to the Batcomputer’s main screen, where a concept design (drawn up by Damian and critiqued by Lucius, bless that man) for your boyfriend’s Batsuit was displayed. He had originally begun crusading in his father’s most recent suit; but the  _Mark XLII Batsuit_  was far too bulky, worn, and  _short_ for your 6’4” lean crime-fighting machine. That meant you needed an update. And boy, was this one you were certainly not hoping for.

“Sorry, Dams… but it’s not really…  _practical_.” You winced, attempting a euphemistic smile.

“Of course it’s practical. I designed it.” Damian argued.

You shook your head, turning so your bodies faced one another and loosely laid the tips of your fingers on the side of his face. Even if he turned his head away, he still leaned into your touch. He succumbs when you run your thumb over his frown. That settles it into a scowl desperately trying to hide his incoming smile, and you know that you’ve got him. You’re not against cheating to woo him to your side, either.

“It has a bigger collar than the one on Dick’s first Nightwing suit,” You whispered. You leaned in closer and light-heartedly giggled,”And a trenchcoat. Someone could grab that in a fight and knock your lights right out. It’s why I don’t wear a ponytail in the field in anymore.”

“Fine. There may be minor  _flaws_ in its design, but it is nothing that can’t be adjusted,” He said, puffing up his chest and turning up his chin like a proud bird. Considering how he doesn’t take criticism lightly, you were pleasantly surprised with his reaction. It wasn’t too bad. But it seemed that regardless, he was still your Damian, and as soon as he turned around and picked up the digital pen he had begun to pout. Easy fix.

“Hang on—don’t go pouting off on me, Damian.” You joined his side on the other counter, turning the screen on the drawing monitor so that you both could see when you opened up a new sketch.

You smiled when Damian scowled,”I’m not pouting.”

He offered you the pen and observed the movement of your hand as you began to draw on the screen. That had been one thing that drew you together: art. Not only had you bonded over it as friends, but it had brought you together as lovers, when you’d swapped ideas and even worked on pieces together. The week in which you had done the Wayne family portrait was the best week you had ever had. It was also a beautiful piece, in which you had done the sketching on and Damian had painted. So good that it now hung above the fireplace in the main parlor.

“Well, we can still give it a trench coat, but we could develop it so the bottom part turns into a glider so you can travel faster across the city. Oh! Give it a zipper and make it black. Now  _that’s_ aesthetically pleasing. If we make it a separate piece from the main part of the suit—which could basically be some updated armor with the utility belt and without the cape—then you could use it to hold other items in the field. And… maybe a full-face helmet?” You considered, quirking your head to the side as you finished off the eared helmet.

“Father had his mouth exposed, but that could always be dangerous if in a situation involving gas…” Damian said. You grinned with his agreement, but it dropped into concern when he added casually,”And people have shot at me point-blank in the mask as Robin.”

“You just have one of those faces, I guess,” You joked, feeling Damian’s teasing glare piece your gaze. You nudged his side and continued your prodding,”I’m kidding. But I like the helmet—I mean, safety wise. I don’t like it because I can’t see your handsome face.”

“It’s an agreeable design,” Damian crossed his arms. He threw you a gaze in return, smirking,”…You think I’m handsome?”

Damian trapped you against the counter, towering and threatening and beautiful. You slipped your hands over his shoulders and guided him closer.”Mmhmmm,” You hummed slowly before you pressed your smirk against his,” _Very_.”

Across the Batcave in the Archives, Bruce was bent over a filing cabinet, flicking through files at light-speed and  _hrrnn_ -ing to himself at every time he found them to be unorganized. Alfred stood a few feet behind, patiently taking all of the disorganized piles Bruce found and rearranging them into alphabetical order. They were too far away to hear any of your and Damian’s conversation, but it seems Bruce was too absorbed in his work to care. Lately, he’d been snapping at the chance to do any work at all in the Batcave, now that he wasn’t Batman. Alfred, who was tired of this, never stopped reminding him.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred begins. He gets a distracted  _hrrrn_ in response.”Are you aware that you are free from your duties down here? You belong at Wayne Enterprises as of late, sir. Lucius and Master Tim have been asking for you.”

“I need to prepare this for Damian, Alfred,” Bruce says, finally pulling his head out of the heavy drawer. It rumbled on its track when Bruce closed it, rocking shut with a metallic slam.”I’m still concerned for him. He may have been following our…  _mission_ for some time now, but I am still…  _hrn_.”

Alfred turns his head at a large clatter across the room. Bruce follows suit, only to see Damian pushing several pieces of equipment off the Batcomputer to make room for you, and then immediately resuming in loud kissing.

Bruce shakes his head.

“Not to worry, sir,” Alfred said, swiftly returning his gaze to Bruce and ignoring the two at the Batcomputer,”I believe Master Damian will perform… more than  _adequately_ with his new duties.”


	11. In Their Slumber

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All of us have our bad days. Sometimes they have purpose, sometimes they come without reason. Damian’s beloved has one of these days.

Damian wasn’t good with people. He looked at you every morning across the classroom (or if he was lucky, in his arms), feeling the beautiful warmth and infinite happiness flush out the pit of anxiety rooted in his stomach just knowing you were safe, and he’d search for a way to tell you how happy you made him. Every time you told him how much you adored him, how happy  _he_ made  _you_ … the words never came. Every time he came up short.

But at the very least, Damian is good at  _knowing_ people. His father loves the rain, to the point where he listens to it on his phone when he needs to sleep and can’t. Jon’s favorite color is actually green. Alfred is allergic to pine-nuts. You… you, he knew better than he knew himself at times. Not only because he held the knowledge that you loved [subject] because of your parents, or how you liked cheese on your popcorn, or that you secretly liked to watch the muscles roll in his back when he trained, but because he could  _see_ you. He knew what your natural smile looked like. He knew how your expression fell in sleep with the presence of a nightmare or relaxed with a pleasant dream. He’d down-right memorized the embarrassed flushing of your cheeks and had deepening them down to an art form.

So, it goes without saying, that Damian would know if you had a bad day even if you were attempting to hide it. But today must have been one of the  _really_ bad days because you aren’t. His mind had already begun to work out why.

Last night, on Thursday, you had slept over at the Manor. In the last months, it had become your home as much as it was his; you were there almost every day, before school or after, and Damian’s family loved having you around regardless. Damian was your official un-paid tutor, specializing in english and math, while you “tutored” him (…for service hours…) in science and history. You’d spent the majority of the study session tutoring each other in the art of kissing— _for biology_ , Damian said.  _Or French class,_  you’d joked—until you’d actually decided to get your homework done. Then you’d stayed up and played video games until Damian went off for patrol.

“ _Off to save the world already?_ ” You had smiled, watching him fondly from the corner as he pulled on his uniform.

“ _I can stay,”_ Damian ventured, daring to put your happiness above others’ lives. You’d shaken your head, smiling, and Damian had to pull himself from a blissful daze before he’d even began one. TT. He still couldn’t believe  _you_ were insecure about your _looks_ —now  _that_ was almost funnier than watching Drake fall down the stairs. It was like a [god/goddess] of beauty wondering if they were attractive or not.

“ _No_ ,” You’d laughed the word, planting your hands on his chest and pressing him forward,“ _As much as I hate to say it, you’re going, Damian. Gotham needs her Robin._ ”

“ _Yes, but_ you  _need your_ Damian _,”_ He’d said smugly. How could he be anything but? Not only did you want him, but he was truly, beautifully yours.

“ _I think I could go without him for a couple hours,_ ” you reasoned playfully. Something in his chest fluttered with your laugh, and suddenly the daze had its hands around his ankles and was dragging him under. You’d tossed your arms over his shoulder casually. Now your faces were closer. It was his chance.

“ _I think he disagrees_ ,” Damian said. He doesn’t remember much after you kissed him. There was only that hot sensation against his cheeks when he thought back to kissing you, then he’d get distracted and his thoughts would veer off course, and he could only collect that he went out on patrol and returned home sometime afterward.

Pennyworth awoke him at four, and he’d pressed out the morning training agenda faster than usual, returning timely to his sheets by five and getting another blissful hour of you dreaming beside him. When awake you’d always remained wary of his comfort with physical affection. But when asleep you’d bind yourself to him, legs wrapped up in his, nose pressed deep into the crevice of his collarbones. He’d tried to get another hour in him, but by the time he’d managed to drowse your alarms went off in unison and you were up and getting ready.

One thing Damian knew about you, without doubt, was that you were certainly, most definitely  _not a morning person_. He couldn’t resist you, which you knew, and so with a couple of whines, you’d managed to convince him to carry you to the bathroom across the Manor. He could still feel you nuzzling against his chest as you murmured about food.

The shower you took together breezed by. Damian had hiked your legs around his middle, and as you dug the remnants of the night’s patrol from his hair he listened to you describe your dream. It was when he began returning the favor by cleansing your locks did you confess,“ _I’m not feeling very well, to be honest. But I’ve already missed so many days, so I think I’ll just take some medicine and try and deal with it._ ”

Alfred coaxed some breakfast into you before time was up and you were practically sprinting to the garage. It was a nice morning. The front lawn was wet with morning dew, which caught in the light of the rising sun and made the Manor’s grass appear to be peppered with diamonds. It created the effect that your skin was woven from gold and that your eyes were freckled honey. The public’s version of Damian Wayne rose around this time, and once the idiot playboy saw the pretty character in his passenger’s seat he didn’t hesitate to flirt with them.

“ _Woah, who are you and what have you done with Damian Wayne?_ ” You laughed, bowing your head out of his fingers and giggling into your lap.

He relished in the red on your face and planted a hand on the steering wheel,“ _Forgive me, Y/N, but you know I have a reputation to keep up—the idiot socialite who can’t keep his eyes off any eligible man or woman. It’s hard getting into this act each morning._ ” He cast a wink your way before putting the car into drive,“ _But charming beautiful [girls/boys] always lightens the load, I suppose.”_

You’d laughed at that, but it wasn’t nearly as bright or as loud as he would have hoped. Supposing it was just one of those days or that you were just tired, he pulled out of the garage and took off for your high school.

With the car’s speed, you had arrived early enough to go and greet your other friends, all gathered around the front entrance of the school and waiting for it to open to the mass of students collected outside. Damian’s hand had only just clasped around the handle of his door when the car’s center console lit up with notifications, his phone playing the familiar ringtone Dick had chosen a forever ago. Damian respected the team’s foundations too much to change it, not like Gar or Kori would let him regardless.

“ _When there’s trouble you know who to call~,_ ” the lyrics began, and Damian answered the alert before the Teen Titans’ supposed “theme” could continue. He got the basics; an attack was being made on Titan’s Tower and he was needed ASAP.

You closed the door on your side of the car, leaning over it so your faces were closer. All you had to do was nod, a concerned smile,“Go, boy wonder. And be safe.”

Damian remembered plenty after you kissed him this time. He’d booked it home, took the nearest teleporter to Titan’s Tower and helped the other teens take care of the threat. By the time he was no longer needed school had just let out, and now here he was in his room.

There was a heavy silence that swarmed his bedroom as Damian observed you, his gaze sweeping over your form and compiling the evidence somewhere in the recesses of his mind. You closed the door and stood there, letting him find out what he needed too, and then when he stood from his windowsill you threw down your bag and collapsed into him with a throat-tearing sob.

“It was that Terran boy again, wasn’t it? What did he do this time? I know he did something. God, I’ll tear him limb from limb—” Damian snarled, wrapping his arms around you as if to protect you from some invisible danger. He was still in uniform, still very Robin and still very battered. It made you question why you couldn’t be more like him; one of the Titans could have died in the last hour for all you knew, and here Damian was, comforting  _you_  as you sobbed over the idiotic trials of life. In comparison, his problems were so far beyond your own there was no real way of knowing what toll they could take on him. But he was still here instead.

“Are the—are the Titan’s okay?” You choked, sniffling heavily and trying to level your breathing.

“Fine. But they don’t matter right now,” He raised a hand to his mask and gradually pulled it from his face. When it was off, he captured his eyes with his own, throwing it to the side as you had done with your bag. He surprised you by cupping your face,“ _You_ do, my beloved. Now tell me what is wrong.”

“Just a… just a rough day,” you shook your head between his hands. The tears kept coming even if they now felt impossibly insignificant, clogging your airways, stuttering and chopping your breath in bursts of quick succession. His gloves were coarse and hot against your face, but with the touch brought comfort. Comfort from  _Damian_ , which was infinitely better. You tried to gather yourself,“Just… just a lot of little things… piling up, I guess. I’m sorry.”

“TT,” Damian scoffed, shaking his head.

His touch was suddenly gone, and then his gloves were being torn off and thrown somewhere too. Then came his boots in two hearty  _clunk_ s. His belt hit the floor in a jumble of metallic clicking, ending with the costume leggings and tunic. The golden  _R_ flickered in the corner of your vision once Damian finished undressing. Then his hands returned. They were coarse and warm too, but this time his thumbs were stroking the sides of your face, and with the feeling of his skin came compassion.

“Don’t  _apologize,_ you fool,” Damian practically laughed. You were stunned into silence when his lips found the bridge of your nose, and then Damian was racing to the other side of the room, pulling a mighty trunk from beneath his bed. You watched him flick open the latches and then the hood in search of answers. He gave none, only dipping his hands into the mass of weaponry.

“You must understand, beloved; you are my everything. And if some imbecile— _Terran_ — dares to have the audacity to make my everything cry, then I must take appropriate action and defend your honor,” Damian recited dramatically.

You were happy to say that you were unsure he was being serious. He was leaps and bounds away from this idealistic version of vengeance in which he was raised upon. But if this was a show to entertain you, it was certainly working; his confession and bravado had made your face red for his favorite reason, and there may have been a grin pulling at your cheeks.

“Or, to summarize: someone made you cry,” Damian unsheathed a katana from the trunk, and it was sharp enough to cut through the air with a high  _shring!_  Damian held it across his face,“Then I shall make  _them_ cry.”

His seriousness cracks in half with your laugh. It is wet, it is wilted, but it is still a laugh all the same. Gently, you knelt at his side and brushed the arm holding the blade away. He dropped it and pushed the case away with his foot, his skin singing with the clasping of your hands.

“You don’t need to  _defend my honor_ , Damian,” you sighed, mirth still dipping into your voice.“No one made me upset—not even Terran. It was just… stress, and relationships, and friends…  _normal_ things.”

“Is there anything between us in jeopardy?” Damian tensed. He didn’t like how your eyes had fallen to the crest of his tunic at the word  _normal_.

You shook your head, laughing when his body language loosened every so slightly,“God no, Damian. We’re perfect.  _You’re_ perfect.”

Damian considered his words a little too seriously not to be cute, but you didn’t comment. It was, to your surprise,  _Damian_ who commented. His voice rolled low when he spoke, strummed with a cord of awkwardness that made his tone genuine,“I… I feel the same way about you. That is good. You are perfect too. Very perfect. Yes.”

You bit back another chuckle, but the mirth was cut short abruptly. Your hand flew to your temple. With a sniffled groan, you dismissed Damian’s jolt of worry,“Thank you. But actually, I’m the complete opposite of perfect right now. My body feels like it’s trying to murder me.”

“I see,” Damian said. Without another second to waste, he scooped you up and delivered you to his bed, smirking smugly with your yelp of surprise,“Give me a moment. No sickness can conquer  _my_ beloved without  _my_ permission. Trust when I say you’ll be in good health in no time.”

* * *

With the recent attack at Titan’s Tower, father swiftly had Damian running his normal rounds again, delivering messages to Barbara’s Eyes in the city and back, searching for a connection. He’d ended patrol at one in the morning. Even if that was early for him, it still felt too late. He hadn’t wanted to go on patrol at all with your worsening condition. Damian had parted with the knowledge that the soup Alfred made could only do so much, and that the medicine he had administered was making things  _worse_. Father had sent him off early with his head so out of the game.

Damian pushed open his window, shouldering his way inside and landing on the carpet soundlessly. The moonlight pooled through the opening and sent his dull shadow across the bed, his cape molding with the night and allowing the darkness to envelop him near entirely. He smirked at the scene that greeted him;  _finally_.

After a late afternoon of struggling to heal you, sleep’s healing powers became a priority. He’d spent all of nine o'clock with your fever rising and your ear against his side, reading the pages of your current book aloud to you as bait for sleep to capture your conscience. The cool towel had seemingly relieved only a portion of the heavy fever. At one point or another, you did nothing but talk for a couple hours, until father had called for him, and Damian commanded his animal companions to guard you.

They had certainly made the better company. Alfred the cat had posed as something akin to a headrest, draped around your neck and watching him from the shadows, tail flicking about and tickling your face in your slumber. Ace and Titus laid on either side of you, both of the hounds’ ears perked with his entrance.

“Good job, all of you,” Damian praised. Titus made a noise in his throat that sounded pleased, Ace yipped quietly, leaving Alfred’s indifferent meow behind. He made sure to take a picture—both to show you in the future and… y'know, to brag. His beloved was beautiful at all times of day and night.

He pats Titus’ rear and nodded behind him. When the hound didn’t move, Damian huffed,“Titus. Come. I want to rest with them.”

Titus growled. Damian narrowed his eyes, and Titus returned the gesture. With an annoyed huff, Damian rounded the bed and performed the same action with Ace. The Bathound didn’t even open an eye, never mind respond. Grumbling, Damian began to pull apart his armor, mumbling about his bed being stolen by his animals.

“Ace,” You whispered, scratching his back. Ace blinked awake and without a whine or bark of complaint, padded across the bed and curled himself atop your feet.

“How’d you do that?” Damian inquired, incredulous.

You refrained from answering, only mumbling and shaking your head, nestling deeper into his sheets. Damian hurried in getting off his armor, pulling off his tunic and slipping down to his boxers in silent swiftness. When his arms came to your body he was thankful to discover they were at a normal temperature. Warm too, but mostly because of just how cold patrol had made him.

It was just you, him, the protective barriers of his pets, and the moon. The assurance of solitude gave him confidence. So just as you were about to succumb to sleep’s sweet embrace, he assured that you came to his first.

Damian kissed your shoulder, closed his eyes, and nestled tightly against your warmth,“Goodnight, my beloved. And rest well. Tomorrow, I shall deal my wrath upon the Terran boy.”


	12. Castaway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Y/N is training to be Batgirl. As a final test to her abilities, Bruce decides to test her the way he tested himself and thus strands Y/N on an uninhabited island. There, Y/N is given a list of tasks she must complete before her three days on the island are over. But because Bruce doesn’t want Y/N to take the risks that he had to, he decides to combine two plans into one: complete Y/N’s training and create a proper partnership between her and her crime-fighting counterpart Robin… but by stranding Damian on the island as her back up.

_Three days_ , Y/N thinks to herself. She remembers Tim’s advice—which is more a warning than anything else—about the final initiation into the Bat-clan. After months of training, each of the Robins and each of the Batgirls was stranded on an uninhabited island in the Indian ocean for three days. Three days in which they proved themselves by completing challenges. If they successfully accomplished each task given to them by Bruce, then they made it off the island with an emblem in their hands.  _I can take three days_.

 _Three days_ , you contemplated. While Bruce had originally accompanied Dick during his final task, the Batman now stays behind. But then Barbara mentions that  _Dick_ was  _her_ backup, how Stephanie was  _Tim’s_ backup, how Dick was Jason’s and so on. When you ask Bruce who will come with you during your training—to ensure you aren’t eaten alive, or that you can actually make it through, or so you have a way home in an emergency—he looks at you pointedly. The look tells you to deduce, and the butterflies in your stomach immediately flare and you look to Damian. Damian, who at that moment, held a shit eating grin on his face. You reconsidered your original thought: Maybe you  _couldn’t_ handle three days. Especially if you were to be alone with him.

You would have traded your soul in order to get Cass down there with you, or Stephanie—hell, even  _Jason_ , who would do as much laughing at your expense as Damian would. But the thing about having Damian there wasn’t just that he’d be there if you failed, but that he’d  _be there_. 24 hours. Three days. The boy you’d been trying to hide your massive crush from would get three whole days with nothing but observing you and your horrid attempts at hiding your body language.

Or maybe…  _was_ it a crush? Could you  _really_ call it that? There was just as much irritation as there was infatuation in the word. While just being near him made your face flare, the knowledge you were blushing because of him made you furious. When he mocked you—a favorite activity of your future partner—you wanted to best him in combat a thousand times over, but at the same time you rather liked the attention. You absolutely hated yourself for it, as the relationship was beneficial to no one, and there seemed to be nothing about Damian that made him redeemable enough for a romance. Just thinking about the paradox you had entered made your upper lip curl. Why would anyone like someone if they were so horrible to you? Why would anyone want anything from someone like that?

(In your most private moments, you’d lower all of the mental barriers you had put to stomp out your feelings and asked yourself  _why_. The answer was usually a resounding “ _why the hell are you asking me???_ ”. But there were also the times where’d you’d allow your imagination to stretch  _just_ past reality, where’d you remember how sweet and concerned he was when people were hurt, or how his core motivation for everything was helping others. While for many this could possibly excuse Damian’s ruder tendencies, but you were a realistic person. Saying he had a good heart didn’t always make up for the times he was an utter asshole.)

You are equipped as if you landed without your gear, without anything but your casual day-at-the-mall clothing and the list in your hand. Regardless if it was just normal paper it felt weighted in your pocket. If you lost it the challenge was over, and you would never be associated with the name  _Batgirl_ without  _failure_ somewhere in between.

Damian is the complete opposite. Not only is his attire appropriate for the weather (expensive running shoes, adventuring shorts, and a tank top that does so much more than emphasize the rippling muscles in his back and arms—okay, we’re  _already_ a minute into day one and you’re  _already_ fantasizing) but he has a pack full of supplies and even his utility belt. Tauntingly, knowing full damn well finding water is one of the items on your to-do list, Damian uncaps one of his water bottles and downs it. He flashed you something between a sneer and a grin,”Better hurry. There’s only so much time until the sun sets, Ms. Y/N.”

You let out a deep, deep sigh and commanded yourself not to scowl back at him. Instead, you retrieve the list of tasks and quickly went over them. Besides the survival-related tasks (make a fire, find clean water, find food), there was also other challenges, like craft two weapons and search for the “hidden treasure”.

The beach you had been set down upon had been smoothed by the helicopter blades, whipping up the sand into your eyes, blinding you under the already overbearing heat of the sun. From what you could determine this was the only beach on the island, which had a good amount of space before the tree-line began. You had already spotted a good tree for observing the rest of the island when Damian tapped on your shoulder.

“Are you aware you have challenges to complete, or are you going to camp out here for the rest of the three days?” Damian said, tossing his bag onto the sand.

You watched with a glare that could be directed at him or to shield your eyes from the sun. Damian remained annoyingly calm, flicking down his shades and folding his arms behind his head, folding back against the bag like he was poolside at some five-star hotel.”Best to find a freshwater source first, Batgirl. Don’t want you to dehydrate or anything.”

You pointed to the storm coming in from the south, and didn’t bother to dignifying him with an explanation. The next step would be finding food, but if there was a storm coming in then you would need supplies for a shelter. That meant you would need an axe; so the jungle it was.

“Well if you’re hoping to catch some rainwater, you’re going to need a bucket,” Damian said. He had already begun to follow you into the jungles depths, down a worm of a natural path you had found. He easily caught the branch you tried to snap back at him. To make matters worse, he chuckles with the action.

“You aren’t supposed to be giving me tips,” you pushed aside a curtain of lacy vines to reveal a path beside a slope. Breaking the branch off of a tree, you bent it over your leg and snapped it in two. It had a good grip and weight, and would make a fine axe—and a weapon, already crossing off half of one of your tasks. As you began to rig a sharp rock to the handle with some twine-like vine strings, you scoffed and turned your back to him,”If that’s what you call tips, anyway. I’m not as much of a dumbass as you think I am.”

“Debatable,” Damian said, innocently watching as the muscles in your back worked to wind the knot on your new tool tight. How every sinew drew taut with his comment. There was so much  _power_ in your form, and although he’d never say it, it was both pleasing to admire and to imagine you wielding this power. To know that you could match him in combat was… attractive, to say the least.

He was drawn out of the temporary daydream to you grunting. You had decided to climb a tall tree toward the beginning of your journey, and Damian lowered his gaze and tried to sturdy it as you climbed higher toward the vantage point.

Father had done this. Father had  _planned_ this, as Damian had longed since learned of how relationships changed on these little “training programs”. Dick and Bruce had entered the challenge with complete separate ideas, but returned home to the Manor with the beginnings of the partnership that worked like clockwork. Jason and Dick had returned as brothers. Tim and Stephanie came home hand-in-hand. Father knew the blessings and magics of this island—the solitude held some sort of power, or maybe Damian was just over thinking things. He had a tendency to do this as of late.

Damian had spent yesterday’s morning of training with your eyes on his back, hating how he pushed himself just the littlest bit harder, only for you to admit that you had been laughing at him because he made such silly faces when he was focussed. And to think he’d been…  _hoping_ even that you had been gazing at him longingly across the cave.  _Idiot_.

(That was untrue. You had been practically wiping away your drool between glances at him, wondering what the landscape of his torso would feel like under your hands. When you’d realized you’d been caught, you made quick work of an excuse, and felt almost bad when he’d grit his teeth and stormed off.)

Weeks ago, Damian had gotten grazed by a hunting knife in a battle with some Mad Hatter thugs. He had been insistent that he could take care of some pre-sewn stitches until you had entered the room. He’d forced himself to hold his tongue as you gently lifted his arm and took care of it in silence, with Damian silently double-guessing whether or not you had done this on your own accord for half of the time. The other half he’d spent panicking, wondering if you could feel how rapid his heartbeat was, or if he was blushing too hard, or silently slipping into the bliss of your touch as you healed him. But it had turned out that Alfred had tasked you with taking care of the stitching on Damian’s arm. You had already known how to apply stitches, and after a brief lesson he’d sent you off to deal with the injury.

(When Alfred asked if you wanted to stitched Damian’s arm, offering to take care of it himself with knowledge of your constant feud, you’d shaken you head and sucked it up. To your dismay Damian spent the entire time in silence. He didn’t even dare to look at you, only silently holding out his arm and pretending you weren’t even there in the first place. Damian hadn’t even  _nodded_ a thank you when you left. It left a petty ill feeling in your stomach.)

He’d even bothered to carry you to bed after movie night. You clung so snugly to his chest as he delivered you upstairs, having already collapsed half-way through some cheap horror movie Stephanie had selected. You had sat by him, keeping an only an inch between the two of you, your hands even bumping once when you had gone to reach for the popcorn. And worse; when he’d tucked you in, your fingers just barely wrapped around his arm. You had even whined with the loss of his warmth. He found himself falling impossibly deeper.

(While Bruce offered you his seat instead, you shook your head both because you didn’t want to bother him and that the other seat was beside Damian. You remembered with stupid bliss how your fingers had brushed his when reaching for the popcorn. After you’d fallen asleep on the couch, you awoke in your own guest bedroom, too hungry to question who had brought you there. All you remembered was how Damian had purposely left you the last piece of your favorite breakfast food, while he could have just as well taken it. You were falling impossibly, idiotically, amazingly deeper.)

“There’s a crowd of birds circling a possible food source. I’m going. Feel free to stay,” you said, waving at him dismissively.

Damian said nothing, only following you deeper into the trees.

* * *

“Why do the fruits have to grow so damn high?” You muttered to yourself, shoving the list into your back pocket. Damian took in a breath to answer your rhetorical question, but you only shook your head and swiftly added,”So it can reach the sun—I know. You don’t need to lecture me.”

“You asked.” Damian shrugged. He leaned one broad shoulder into the bark of a tree, biting down on an apple from his pack, eyes boring smartly into your own.

It had become harder to ignore him, but at least this was a good chance to become more skillful in doing so. Not only did Damian state the obvious to provoke you, antagonize you by going about his supplies uselessly, but he also knew all too well just how pretty he was. He blended in too well with the nature around you. His eyes were startlingly green, the color of ripe pears, glinting in the sunlight to reveal a thousand flecks of the underlying blues. His skin was like warm caramel—he didn’t seem to be sweating either, but you watched with too much investment when the water droplets rolled down his arms and into his tank. Either he was teasing you but pouring it on himself, or that was his way of cooling off.

By the time your thought had finished your fingertips were just brushing a papaya from the largest papaya tree you’d ever laid eyes on. The branch you were on waved unsteadily, but you were  _almost there_. You tried again, risking a further reach. It would be the end of you. The branch tore with a gore-track worthy  _crackkkkk_ , breaking out underneath you fast enough to steal your breath, but not fast enough for you to leap and fix yourself to enough branch like an elegant feline.

Damian rubbed the bridge of his nose as the branch crashed down beside him. He cursed in Arabic,”(For such a brilliant girl you don’t know much about weight placement.)”

You flushed at both the compliment and the insult, first righting yourself on another branch before you began to wonder if he knew you spoke the same language. The evidence to suggest that he didn’t made you grin. You  _knew_ you had found a way to tease him, wrapping your legs tight around the tree’s arm before you swung upside-down and began gathering fruits.

You smirked at him, face red as the blood rushed with gravity.”(You think I’m brilliant?)”

From where you hung you could easily see Damian’s face splatter into an embarrassed shade of copper. He shifted,”I was… unaware that you knew Arabic. Where did you learn?”

“All good—” you had begun to swing, back and forth, back and forth. Then you took a mighty leap with a good amount of momentum, and dropped into a roll before the trunk,”—magicians don’t reveal their secrets.”

Slowly, he began to follow you, and asked in Russian,”(Fine. But is that the only language you speak?)”

“(No,)” you responded in fluent Italian, flashing him a smug grin over your shoulder,”(I speak plenty.)”

Well, Damian was certainly correct in at least one of his statements. Though he would never admit it… you certainly were brilliant. And oh, did your shows of strength and intelligence do things to him.

“(German?)” Damian questioned.

“Natürlich,” you said.  _Of course_.

Damian slid in front of you, where you had taken the temporary knife you made and cut a papaya in two. Damian asked,”(Chinese?)”

“Shì,” you nodded, flicking some of the seeds into the path.  _Yes_.

“How many language do you know?” Damian said. He stopped you in the middle of the path, both annoyed by how pleased and casual you were, and…  _impressed_ with your capabilities. While his brows knit together the frustrated redness remained in his cheeks.

“είκοσι οκτώ,” you said proudly, gaze never dodging his. Damian had to fight not to shrink so quickly under the look. It was made worse when you slid a piece of papaya into your mouth, which dribbled over the curve of your bottom lip and down your chin. You smirked at him and knocked your hip against his as you past,”That’s 28 in Greek, by the way.”

You took a fruit from the pile and tossed it to him. When Damian caught it, you winked and began back down the path. Then, you shook your head and muttered something he didn’t understand,” _Wai krym._ ” Then off you were,  _sauntering_ , hips swaying hypnotically and confidence unwavering.

Damian had to wait until his blush calmed until he could follow you.

* * *

The storm would come late into the night. You were skilled in making fires, and took the hour you had until the rain came to sit before it. The light danced and cast odd shadows on your faces, turning the edges of your hair gold. It’s flame remained obedient under your care, and soon the edges of the wood had blackened and the fire fought tirelessly against the soft breeze. Damian cooked some sort of soup in a can atop a little rack he’d made, and silently waited for it to be ready as you sat with your toes in the sand.

“I learned from my mother,” you finally confessed, carving out more papaya seeds and flinging them into the fire in a practiced dance. They landed in the belly and swiftly darkened in color, the edges curling and paling into ash. Something about the fire’s center made you feel abnormally human; small and powerless, nothing but another lick of heat to contribute to the bonfire that was Earth. You wondered if people like Starfire or Superman looked into fires and felt the same thing.

“She was a linguist in my home country, but also a teacher. When I was young we travelled all around the world, teaching children other languages. Sometimes it was poor children, sometimes private schools. But it didn’t matter to her. She just wanted to help,” You said. Piece by piece you cut apart the fruit, using the shell as a bowl and gently picking from it.”A part of learning new languages from her was teaching them, so as she was learning new ones, she would teach them to me in order to get better. That is where I learned. But my first language was [language].”

Damian took the information in with calculating eyes. He studied your expression for the expanse of a second, flicking away the moment you tried to make contact. Damian leaned forward and prodded at his soup,”I learned Arabic first, as my mother and grandfather both spoke it. Most of our soldiers only spoke chinese, so I learned that too. English became my third when I learned of my father… I suppose I wanted to be able to speak with him, but English was required regardless.”

You purse your lips and took to tending to your meal. Damian never really shared anything of his past with you. Tim, Jason, Dick, and the occasional gesture from Cass had told you the basics. Assassin training. Evil environment. Lack of childhood. It was easy to see these events and their effect on him, but much harder to try and put yourself in his situation and vise-versa. You had grown up…  _everywhere_. Dancing in crowds of women and girls with long breezy skirts, making beautiful jewelry out of copper and strings and wooden beads with wisemen, fishing for legends in rocky seas. Damian was born with a sword in his hand. You were born with your hand extended to others. It was beautifully odd to see two pieces of flame from opposite sides of the fire become so woven.

“I didn’t know my dad very well, so that’s sweet to hear,” you smiled,”But he was a lot like you in the way where he cared for other people—he was kind and generous and sweet.”

Damian held your words in his mouth for far too long, trying to imagine why you would ever compare him to sound a good man. Damian wasn’t kind—definitely not to you. He wasn’t generous. And he certainly wasn’t sweet.

“I’m going to bed,” Damian said. He pushed himself off the sand and had to keep himself from scrambling into his tent.

“What about your soup?” You said, gently pulling the searing metal can off the rack and into Damian’s seat.

Damian nodded his chin in your direction, and hesitated in entering his tent,”Eat it. I’m not hungry—nor will I tell father. You barely picked enough food for today, so consider this me saving you from starvation.”

” _Wai krym_. It’s Kryptonian,” you said. You cracked a smile. As Damian unzipped the door of his camp, he heard the spoon enter the soup’s broth and gently begin to stir it. Damian felt your eyes flick to his back, then drop down back into the can,”It means  _pretty boy_.”

* * *

Damian didn’t know if he slept or not. It felt like he resurfaced between daydreaming constantly, conscious of every chilly breeze or motion in your shelter. Father had admitted that there were no creatures capable of harming you on this side of island—unless you got into a fistfight with a monkey or were attacked by the birds—but he still couldn’t help but tense whenever he heard something. If not for himself, then primarily you. It was utterly  _freezing_.

You had long since put out the fire and retired to the shabby shelter you had built. It was a little thing, composed of long, lean branches and large palm leaves and vines. While you were blanketless and freezing (which was apart of the task, which Damian knew) he was under the two-person sleeping bag in his warm, rain-protected tent. Ah, yes. It was also  _raining_ too.

You would die, Damian reasoned. You would die if he did not keep you warm, or invite you to stay in his tent. And it was his responsibility to keep you alive, right? It would just be to protect you. With the ocean so close and your warmth gone… you would die. Surely.

Damian pushed back one of the leaves of your miniature shelter from the rain, only to find the sand you laid in utterly soaked. When he placed his hand on your arm to awaken you, your skin was  _ice_ , and it took to long to draw you from sleep.

“You are going to freeze out here,” Damian said,”As it is my duty to protect you from this horrible excuse you call a  _shelter_ , I’m insisting that you sleep in my tent instead.”

“Cheating,” you murmured.

“I’m saving you from hypothermia. It’s not cheating if I’m saving your life,” Damian scoffed.

“I’m ready for death,” you groaned. Then, you rolled over and raised your arms, making grabby motions with your hands. Damian wasted no time in scooping you up, dashing through the rain and turning on the heat lamp he had.

“Are you sure?” You questioned. Damian nodded, pulling back the sleeping bag’s top end and encouraging you to slip inside. Damian left the pillow to you and crawled over to end of the tent, already prepared to sleep there. But it was large enough for a two-person… Damian almost cursed aloud—father had planned  _this_ , too!

“But you’ll be cold,” you frowned, blearily reaching out for him in your sleepy haze. Damian turned off the light when your hand fell onto his back. It was damp from being in the rain, but not nearly as damp as you were.

“Doesn’t matter.” Damian dismissed.

“Don’t try and be the hero,  _wai krym,_ ” you sighed, patting the other side of the sleeping bag.”I’m fine with it. But I don’t want you to freeze too. Just sleep.”

Damian grumbled. After you set your head down onto the single pillow, attempting to leave for him, the bag opened and Damian slipped inside. You had to force yourself to turn your back to him. Even if his skin was a little damp he was  _deliciously_ warm, and the imagery of your arms wrapping around his neck and your cheek pressing into his chest almost brought you to tears. But Damian made sure to nearly tear the zipper by how far he was pressing into the seem. So you didn’t press it, laid your head down, and went to sleep in the darkness.

* * *

Of course, in sleep, your body couldn’t help itself.

You knew immediately upon awakening what had happened. You wanted to flip a table, wanted to scream, wanted to sprint straight into the water and let the ocean currents take you to a better place. Anything but this. Because, as amazing as this all was, the awkward conversation to come was not one you were ready for.

You learn lots of knew things about him from this position. As you predicted, Damian is gloriously warm. He smells like tropical fruits—so much so it almost feels like he’d taste sweet if you tried him—and is  _definitely_ a cuddler. One arm has wormed itself underneath you, wrapping around your back to meet the other as it winds around you waist. His biceps are massive (which you know because your face is pressed into one), as is everything else on him, creating a wall of lean, towering muscle who looks almost angelic when he’s asleep. He doesn’t snore. He barely seems to even  _breathe_ , and you know that if you even blink wrong he’ll jump up like he’d been awake for the entire night. This leaves you ridgid in place for what feels like a beautiful, beautiful eternity.

It ends rather tragically when Damian simply releases you, rolls over, and wordlessly fumbles around for the list you’d set aside. He gives it to you and said,”Better get started.”

“Yeah,” you sighed. He holds his breath as you worm out of the bag, unzip the tent, and go to discover how much water you’d gotten overnight. As soon as you’re gone, he sighs deeply into his hands.

You’d been nuzzling into him.  _Nuzzling_. Practically purring as you curled into him, legs entwined, cheek rubbing against his chest and breath fanning gently across his arm. You had one limb folded against yourself, the other knotted in the back of his tank top. And your expression when he awoke you; puffy from deep rest, adorably sleepy as you pawed at the sleep in your eyes. He groans into his pillow. He  _loved it_.

* * *

The other challenges breezed by quickly with all of your focus conquered by them. You had shunted all thoughts of the incident to the sidelines of your mind, drowning thoughts of Damian and his morning voice— _god_ , was it hot, with how his accent had leaked through and how husky it had gotten. Was it always like that when he awoke? So sexy and low? So drawled and lazy? Oh my… was it like that during  _sex?_ Would he whisper in your ear all of the dirty—well, you’d  _been_ doing a splendid job of keeping them down, anyway.

Finding the “treasure” wasn’t so hard. Although, you’d wished that you’d found it sooner—a utility belt of your own would have been extraordinary, and there would have been no need for a temporary knife when you had ultra-sharp batarangs. It had been unceremoniously wrapped around a tree from a cord. You were beginning to question if this challenge was really a challenge at all, as all you had to do was scale the tree and cut the rope. Whoever you were backing up next in this family, you’d make sure the challenge was a little bit harder next time.

Of course, the one thing hard about it was dealing with Damian. And while that had briefly been amazingly easy, that ideal had spiralled down into nothingness. Damian nor yourself had not spoken for the last hour or so, only mindless things like which direction was north and where the monkeys were last sighted. You almost jolt when he speaks up next.

“Did I… Did I make you uncomfortable?” Damian asked. He had been following you the entire trek, but had since moved to your side.

“That was never my intention. I was saving your life—you were going to freeze to death out there, or have bugs enter your ears,” Damian said. You nearly smiled at how expressive he was when ranting. His voice dropped to something lighter,”I wanted you to be warm.”

“Trust me, Damian, you didn’t make me uncomfortable. Actually, I really…” You caught the thought before it be completed. Were you really stupid enough to nearly admit your feelings? Definitely not. You had held onto this secret for almost a year now, and there was no way you were loosening your hold on it. So your head shook,”Forget it.”

Damian caught you by the wrist, grip gentle but still capable of holding you still. He shifted until you were eye-to-eye, until the green of his eyes had hypnotized you to reveal the truth, rendering you mindless by the moss color’s beauty. For a moment it pretty much did, combining with his touch to get your eyes to swivel anywhere but his.

He completed your original thought,”…You enjoyed it? Lying with me… like that?”

There was no way to deny it. You did— _of course_ you did—but saying you didn’t would wound him, and saying you did would reveal it all. At the very least… you could go with the better option, right? Maybe he wouldn’t see it the way it really was.

You nod.

Damian studied your face, just to be sure. But the blush in your cheeks and the dilation of your pupils had already confirmed his hopes. He pressed his thumb into your pulse, felt it beating wildly with his touch, felt it go wild because of him. Something about your eyes must do something to him to, because he darts forward under your spell, kisses you, and immediately strides off toward the beach again.

_I just kissed her I just kissed her Ijust kissed herI justkissedher ohmygod—_

“If you’re going to do  _that_ , then at least make it last a little longer,” you said. Then you were kissing again, but it was longer, and nicer, unwinding every taut muscle in each of your bodies. Damian feels worn hands come up to cup his face, to test the feeling of his skin as you kiss. He feels your kiss move in tandem, moving from awkward holding to bobbing out for breath and diving back in again, fruity and hot and warm.

Damian finally pulled away for a hard breath. Without missing a beat, he began,”You hate me. You hate me, don’t you? You should. I’m horrible to you. I’ve only been horrible to you.”

“That’s only partially true,” you said bravely, remembering the soup and the talk and the warmth,”But I’m sure you could make it up to me…?”

He leveled his gaze with your own, faces close, light spinning behind the tree canopies and making you have to squint. This island is blessed, gifted by some deity to bring people together or to unveil secrets that create romances, brotherhoods, families. He doesn’t know if he should thank Bruce, or the island, or you. It doesn’t matter, though. He’ll be a little busy.

“My pleasure,” Damian said. He leaned in,”Habibti.”


	13. The Inevitable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU where flowers bloom on you where your soulmate is injured.

_“Your soulmarks are gone!” Observed a classmate, drawing the attention of the whole room,”Wow! That means you found them! You’re so lucky!”_

_“Your soulmarks,” your friend whispered in awe, gently grazing the skin a thousand marks once were,”Have I met them? Are they nice? What does it feel like? Why were there so many?”_

_“You have soulmarks!” Your best friend cheers, wrapping you up in their embrace,”Oh, tell us that we know them? Who is it? Go on—spill!”_

Y/N L/N had done the impossible before. But her definition of “impossible” is completely different from the rest of the 7 billion people populating the Earth. Perhaps that’s why you’ve managed to overcome these incredible, daring feats. Or maybe you were just lucky. After all, most people who don’t study for standardized testing don’t ace. Most people can’t improvise a battle strategy in the middle of a war zone after the first was botched, and then win. Most people can’t take down a dozen armed men without breaking a sweat. Most people haven’t met their soulmate—nevermind at only the fine age of sixteen. But then again, most people aren’t Batgirl. And Batgirl is a master of mastering the impossible.

Soulmates, to the world, are exaggerated to be impossible. The subject had been put on society’s backburner and solely arose with its hands entwined with headlines like scientific discovery, faith-in-humanity-returned spins, or worse, horoscopes. Soulmates became something you talked about at sleepovers. Maybe you talked to your spouse about it— _hey, you may not be “the one”, but you’re still here and I still love you and perhaps it’s better that I got to_ choose  _you_ —and thus soulmates earned their space snugly shoulder-to-shoulder with the cryptids category. In short, if you woke up to a bouquet of flowers sizzling against your skin only to discover your friend had earned an injury in the same place, guess what—you won the ticket for special snowflake! You were officially impossible.

But remember, your definition of impossible is different. Impossible, to you, is a mantra. You’ve heard it a thousand times from relatives and strangers alike. You’ve prayed the word as you moved mountains and saved the world. Because to you, impossible was just a word to inform you of the challenge present. And you bet your ass that you would find a way to cross-out the  _im_  each and every time. Barbara Gordon, Cassandra Cain, and Stephanie Brown had all done the same before you. That was definitely what made you Batgirl.

So of course, it’s logical to conclude that you’d find an impossible way to make being soulmates infinitely more paradoxical.

Y/N L/N and Damian Wayne, the latest incarnation of Batgirl and Robin—you are soulmates. The first unbroken pair to come out of the classic duo. That’s what makes it impossible. Because it had never quite interlocked so nicely until you, never before had a Batgirl and Robin bore flowers like overgrown gardens. Damian is really your everything, and the bond was too ancient and strong to bend, nevermind break as it had done before. Maybe this would never end. Or maybe that was just you hoping. But if Barbara and Stephanie and Cass had taught you a damn thing, then you knew hope and love were so much stronger than the fear of being wrong. Thus, it’s better that you only think about the bright side.

There was almost too much bright side to being soulmates. After every unlucky card the world had dealt you, the warmth of the bond somewhere in the core of your heart reminded you of all of the aces. The bond was funny like that. It was too kind to be real, like a little harp’s cord tied around each of your hearts, something that you could strum to share promises and beautiful secrets. This possibly literal and/or metaphorical cord allowed soulmates to do a thousand special little things; you could feel their life force and determine if they were hurt or not, to the point where some soulmates have felt the other die. And, as you immediately discovered, bear marks on the other when bruises or cuts or wounds are born.

Damian Wayne is…  _sigh…_ everything. If you wanted to be romantic (which a part of you does), then you could easily go on and on about every detail of his persona. He was stupid and reckless, irritated with everything that had a pulse, hard to get along with, and utterly, undeniably, absolutely, impossibly  _perfect_.

It’s fitting to see that not only is Damian an artist, but a masterpiece as well. It was like Talia had taken a block of marble blessed by the gods and carved him from it, perfecting every muscle and vein, chiseling the contrasting sharpness of deadliness and roundness of youth into every sly smile. Michelangelo’s David had come to life and grasped a sword. If Michelangelo had fixed jade stones into David’s irises, anyway.

If Damian was made of marble, then his will was of steel. He was dedicated and fiercely loyal to every cause he applied himself to, with a passion that burned like an eternal flame. He had the patience of a predator stalking its prey, a liking for organization and order, and you could rely on him in the field to watch your back. (Not like he didn’t do that in civilian clothing, or at school, or home… virtually everywhere).

He had his flaws. The league had bled distrust into his very soul, so he had a tendency to assume everyone was an enemy, which had actually saved your lives a fair amount of times. The passion you loved in him could be hard to calm. And sure, he’d strike the sun if it insulted him. But you had your flaws too, and love had blinded you both to your imperfections.  _Mostly._

The bond had exposed you to each other in some of the most beautiful and terrifying ways. You weren’t blessed with the ability to feel his emotions like you felt your own, or summon some ancient power to protect one another in times of crisis. No. You were marked. Up and down your arms, swirling around the column of your throat, diving between your collarbones, sprouting from your chest like a crown of thorned roses. Ah yes, you nearly forgot. The roses. The beauty inlaid within their petals crowded on your skin to mock the bruises he wore. If you stared at them long enough, it felt like the thorns had latched onto your skin like teeth, digging and digging until the purple was painted red. The only thing that could remove them was the touch of your soulmate. It was just ironic—figuratively, only Damian could heal your wounds, and only you could heal his.

Everyone had flowers. Your soulmate would get hurt, you’d feel a mimicry of the pain, and a bud would replace the wound. The growth rate was different for everyone. Lois Lane’s were immediate, the sunflowers wrapping around her like a second skin as the buds bloomed in moments. The orchids layering Dick Grayson took  _years_ to grow from sprouts to adults. You had watched the peonies blossom on Damian’s caramel skin, as gradual as the actual flower’s lifespan—one or three years—just as you watched your own battle wounds become scars. You’d traced the color of the coral petals and watched them fade under your touch.

For heroes and lovers of heroes, your amount of flowers made sense. Damian had been fighting ever since the day he was born. You had been training since you could walk. Normal people had flowers; maybe a bud on their finger from a papercut, a surgery scar, or the childhood story of how you got your arm broken. You had become a  _garden_  and one that Damian would weed and heal and grow. Perhaps it was meant to be completing in that way. Damian was your garden, as you were his.

As far as gardens go, however… Damian is a stubborn one.

“Don’t go jumping into things you don’t need to be jumping into. Don’t take unnecessary risks.  _Do not_ take on something you can’t handle by yourself.” You punctuated each sentence with a jab to your boyfriend’s chest, which he didn’t seem to appreciate. Damian only rolled his eyes—in his defense, you gave this speech each time he went off for patrol—and pouted, only smiling when you smacked the hand mimicking your speech away and finished your declaration.

“And  _please_ ,” you laid your knuckles on one side of Damian’s face, gently rubbing your joints along his cheekbone like you were petting a needy kitten. This needy kitten with eyes as green as Earth watched your expression morph from stern to true worry. He dropped the act of annoyance when your fingers came up, nuzzling back into your hand in an attempt at lazy affection. You paused your movements,”Be  _safe._ ”

“I will, habibti,” Damian sighed, brows furrowing. He didn’t cease in leaning into your touch and thus you didn’t cease touching,”You act as if I’m not.”

You scoffed lightly, nearly a laugh of disbelief. Damian opened his eyes to find you pulling up your sleeve to your elbow. Layering like a second skin was a large cluster of roses, the color of the water at sunset, as purple as midnight could ever get like a romanticized bruising upon your arm. Damian’s hand subconsciously grazed said spot atop his armor, the sting of a nearly too-deep cut like an old friend jumping at the chance to greet him. He scowled lightly.

Before you could pull your sleeve over the mark, Damian clasped your wrist with his combat glove and leveled your gazes. While his eyes were often like a spell with the way they enchanted you, the only magic lying within them now was a determined seriousness,”Did it hurt?”

“No,” you lied, because the marks  _always_ hurt. Damian grew up on measures of controlling how he felt pain, and thus barely felt scrapes and slashes unless they were mortal. But you felt all the pain hidden by these tactics. While punches for Damian felt like roughhousing with a younger sibling, they were sometimes hard enough to throw you aside while clutching your jaw. One part of the mark was feeling the pain of your lover, and the other was feeling the pain of a flower suddenly being carved into your skin. It added to it. Made it worse. There was no beauty in the process but physical appearance.

Damian predicted your statement almost as quickly as you predicted what he planned to do next. What was nice about it all was that now, your and Damian’s marks barely even had a chance of forming before they were gone. After particularly risky missions you would take a bath together, wrapped up in each other, tracing the marks off of you until the ink evaporated and they disappeared. While you were intimate Damian would kiss every petal, every thorn or stem until you were a blank canvas for him to paint with love-bites. Every chance you had and with every flower you saw, just a brush of thumb or soft kiss would clear your body and your mind.

He smoothes your sleeve back downward. Damian just stares at the roses, intertwined, wrapping around your arm like how grapes grow around the columns of a trellis. Your pulse beats wildly under his lips as it always has, crying louder and louder the closer he comes to the bundle of flowers halfway from your elbow. The ink dances under his lips. The flower’s petals curl in and begin to fade back into the color of your skin at their edges, like you’d tossed the roses into a fire and they’d folded back into themselves. He’d closed his eyes. When he opened them, the flowers had become nothing but air.

“I will return to you safely,” Damian said, bobbing his head once,”I promise you.”

You caught him before he could disappear on you. He always  _knows,_ and the moment you turn him around he stares down at you near expectantly. Damian’s heart flutters like a bird learning to fly under your fingers when you promise,”I love you.”

“I love you too,” Damian nods. The flowers on your skin angle toward him as if he is the sun.

* * *

You hate not being out on patrol. Batgirl was out of commission only because Bruce forced you to take a week off; in the previous month before your “imprisonment” Riddler had earned your hatred for successfully kidnapping Robin. The petals painting your torso from Damian’s torture had since been kissed away, but that didn’t keep you from hunting Riddler down yourself and throwing him in Arkham where the bastard belonged. Bruce had barely given you enough time to spit on Nygma’s shoes before he locked your uniform inside its case, forcing it to stare down at you tauntingly with Damian out in the field.

It was a rough night. You didn’t know who they were fighting, but Alfred had already offered to prepare some healing teas in favor of dispelling the pain of your growing number of marks. A purple rose had rooted onto your cheek, and about a dozen had flourished on your chest. The bath you had taken had helped only so much. Sleep would be the only way of dousing your worries and the pain in one swing, so you retired to bed with a fan on and your window propped open, an ice pack clutched against your heart. But so far, that wasn’t working either.

The stinging comes first. Just a dull ache, getting louder and louder until it begins to burn. The flowers form like water spills. You watch a rose wrap around your knuckles like a set of brass, clenching your fists and turning your expression to stone as the petals are carved into your bones. You’re tempted to call him, just to hear if he’s alright. Just to hear his voice.

 _“I’m fine,”_ He’d say, and you could envision the light scowl on his face, perched on a roof’s edge as he spoke and admired the city. _”I’m Robin, remember? I’ll always come back—especially if you will be waiting for me.”_

 _“Such a romantic,”_ You’d tease.

_“Only for you. But tell a soul and you’ll have to kiss me goodbye!”_

Your eyes fly open and you release a horrifying cry. The flesh of your stomach sizzles as a mass of flowers scorches your skin, carving a mark you are sure even Damian’s touch cannot heal.  _Damian. Damian, Damian, Damian!_ Has he been stabbed? Shot? You can only think of him in the haze of your pain. It builds and builds until you are shaking and weeping, clawing at your stomach to try and pull up your shirt, trying to provide some relief to the pain.

Suddenly there is yelling, and madness. You are unsure if it is Jason carrying you or Dick, but regardless someone’s yelling for anesthetic and a cool towel. You’re crying, and it  _burns_. The rose’s thorns dig into your flesh and tear until you are nothing but bloody bone. It’s getting harder to hold the scream in your throat, knowing how it could shake the Earth with its volume, because  _Damian is hurt Damian is hurt Damian is hurt_ and that’s all you can think.

“Hey, hey, c’mon—” A hand gently pats your cheek as you’re deposited onto a medical table, wiping away the sweat pooling along your brow. Jason’s visage blurs and multiplies under the blinding light above, and you wonder how it felt for his soulmate when he died. Dick appears as a blue and black blob somewhere far off.

“Why is there  _blood?_ There’s never  _blood_ with this sort of shit, is there?”

“If it’s bad—Damian can’t be much better. We gotta prep for the worst.”

The world seemed to glitch out of proportion.

“Master Jason, go get another rag and bowl of cool water while I apply—pain—medication. Master Dick, prep for an operation an—contact with—Master Bruce.”

“On—it.”

“He’s already calling—it’s not—doesn’t seem—knife wound—”

* * *

You don’t really register anything at first. Pain medication has turned your thoughts to a walk through the thickest mud. The Batcomputer’s glow is faint behind the glaze of medication-induced sleep on your eyes, the bandages tight around your stomach are nothing but a hindrance to your movement, and the Batarang held in your hand is beginning to cut into your palm. But, as he always seems to be, Damian is your first thought.

They are gathered around the console, some arguing, others with their gazes cast toward, most waiting for Bruce to speak. The moment you enter the space every sound is torn from the air, leaving it empty but for the shrieks of the bats and the cave’s waterfall.

Your feet feel heavy, so maybe that’s why all eyes turn to you, stomping in and wavering on your feet. Dick rushes to help you stand up properly, but you only jab the Batarang at him and hiss,”Where  _is he?_ ”

Damian rests. His breathing is a clarity you have never realized you needed, and as soon as the rise of his chest steadies in a soft breath you nearly cry out in relief. Not unlike your own stomach he is bandaged. His torso is wrapped up like that of a mummy’s, with another from his shoulder and around his back. Your hand flies to your shoulder blade, feeling the familiar ache of another new flower there. He looks peaceful, startlingly  _peaceful_ , and yet your stomach is still braided together in an icy flush of anxiety.

There is already a chair at his side. You take it.

Dick observes the scene quietly. The others file out, whatever argument there was ceasing. You hear him pull in a breath to explain, but second-guessed himself; you don’t need to know the details now. You just need Damian.

He doesn’t wake up. Perhaps it’s best that he doesn’t, with how deep you know his wounds are and all the words that you don’t want to say. You had never considered it before—never in its full depth. Death was always just a step behind, skeletal hands wrapping around your ankles and trying to pull you under with every mission and battle. It clung to the entire family like a shadow. You were familiar with it, you knew it, you had grown accustomed to staring into the abyss and knowing that it stared back. But never before had you realized just how close you were to falling in even when out of the field.

This was nothing but a scare. But scares were also  _reminders_ , and this one was a bath of ice water poured down your spine. Never before had you seen your bond this way. It could kill you. If Damian got a bruise you felt a scrape. If you managed a papercut Damian felt the slice of a blade. If Damian was stabbed, then you were seared and torn in two. If you were hurt then the pain would double for your counterpart. And that’s where the question comes: when would Death’s shadow catch up to one of you, and who would go first under the pain?

Soulmates were a curse. Just another way of proving how fragile mortals are, just another scar or mark or reminder of our shortcomings. Nothing but a scare that turned into a reminder which became the inevitable.

You scooped up Damian’s hands, watching the coral come to life as it died under your touch, the stem of a peony replacing your papercut on Damian’s finger. The moment the pads of your fingers made contact with the bud the mark coiled in on itself, cringing in the final moments of its short life before the beauty was gone. It would soon be replaced by another mark which would suffer the same fate. And another. And another.

Damian’s hand slid from your grasp, eyes still shut, rising to run a thumb across the rose on your cheek. It withered. Until the inevitable.


	14. Normalcy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're no hero.

Everybody has childhood nicknames. Maybe something sweet like  _Benny_ as opposed to Benjamin. Or something odd like  _Dick_ instead of Richard. There were the kids with the bad intentions, like  _Ears_ because of how big someone’s ears were, or  _Gluey_ because somebody had too much fun during craft time in kindergarten—that was your crowd. Although yours wasn’t exactly a childhood nickname. It was a term of affection, but it did happen to call upon one of your many, many shortcomings; your clumsiness in particular.

Damian’s _Lamborghini Murcielago_  was certainly what he had promised it would be. At 80 miles per hour it had been  _idling_ , and through the soft leather of the seats you could barely hear the 632 horsepower engine tearing down the outer streets of Gotham. Too quickly had the ride from Wayne Manor to Robinson Park ended, for the air conditioner had only just begun to warm in contrast to the fall-like weather when Damian parked. Gotham’s air was thicker than usual with whispers of a spring storm rolling in soon. He had wanted to get out before the drizzling began: he had a debt to pay.

“Damian, we could have always stayed home. I would count lying around in bed as a date, y’know.” You said, pressing a thumb into the unlocking mechanism of the seatbelt. It came apart with a soft  _click_.

“I promised you a picnic, and I am determined to follow through. I am a man of my word,” Damian said, words bleeding with the full intention of fulfilling his promise. He looked lovely adorned in a favorite black turtleneck and gold-trimmed coat, layered in designer fabrics, but when had that ever been  _new_? More importantly he looked  _comfortable_. Frown lines had since left his face and put him into a state of something akin to serenity, or at the very least relaxed. The unbreakable knot of stress woven in his back had lost a few threads.

Before your hand could even reach for the doors handle Damian had opened it, welcoming a warm breeze that didn’t seem as bad as you had originally exaggerated. Taking the basket off your lap, you stepped out of the car and tried to adjust to the sharp change in temperatures. Of course it was then you had to live up to your nickname. Your foot caught on the curb and nearly sent you sprawling onto the pavement, but Damian was faster, having caught you by the arms and the basket as fluidly as a dancer.

He raised an eyebrow and teased,”You’re certainly living up to your name,  _Trip_. Or are you just trying to find another excuse to collapse in my arms?”

You flushed and righted yourself, briskly beginning your walk into the shade of the tree canopies,”You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Damian?”

“Too much,” Damian muttered to himself.

Damian easily fell into step beside you, one hand holding the basket, the other extended to you. His large palms were coarse with years of labor, and when your fingers entwined you could feel the jagged and distorted flesh of a scar in the plain of his hand. The case was no different for his knuckles. The bones lying beneath his skin had become steel over years of pressure, with the surrounding muscle joints heavy, skin abraded and red on the surface. You associated them with tenderness and affection, and at the same time the  _crack_ of fist colliding with bone.

Damian was Robin. You  _knew_ that. It was a fact, and your brain could register it and you could think it, but you couldn’t  _feel_ it. In your subconscious Damian Wayne and Robin were two very different people.

Damian Wayne was the crush you’d had since he’d joined Gotham Academy freshman year. You had entered the school from a different city and thus didn’t have any of your old friends there, which had in turn lead to you being the last of the bunch to be chosen as everyone already had their groups of friends. But Damian was mysterious, secretive, brave and alone. He was the one close friend you had out of a hundred people you only spoke to briefly each day. He offered guidance, laughter, and reassurance. You had committed yourself to the idea that he was  _the one_.

But there was also Robin. Courageous, flirtatious, righteous Robin, who always seemed to be there just in time for the save. He was the shadow that perched on the fire escape of your apartment building, a bogeyman who listened when no one else would or could. Who’s lips glittered like glossy candy under the moonlight. Who was an excellent kisser, and an even better confidant.

You had forgotten who you had met first. Who you realized you liked first. Most of your thoughts on the matter were clouded with embarrassment—after all, you had completely and obviously confessed to Robin your dilemmas with Damian, and just how  _dreamy_ and  _perfect_ he was before your and Robin’s thing had gotten going halfway through sophomore year—but you still couldn’t help but ask yourself,  _who came first? Damian Wayne or Robin?_

Or more importantly,  _Why?_ You were just some punk kid at Damian’s school, who didn’t always get the best grades and got him in trouble a lot. You weren’t a hero. You were just you. Sad, civilian, normal person with normal problems you. The only thing that made you special in your own eyes was your relation to Damian.

“You really don’t have to do this,” you said. Damian surveyed a spot under a tree. After deeming it worthy, he opened the basket and unfurled the blanket you had brought. Regardless of your protests, you helped him lay it out.

“Do you not remember what happened, Trip?” Damian said, unpacking the lunches he had made for the both of you. He had a habit for just going  _too damn hard_ on literally everything, including dates, in which he would go to the ends of the Earth (and maybe further) to get a hold of something you maybe said you liked  _once four months ago_. You half expected him to light some candles and serenade you with a guitar (it wouldn’t be the first time for either situation, but those are stories for later dates).

“Two weeks ago, I had proposed we go on a date together. You questioned if we could go on a picnic because you missed being outside, and so I promised you that I would organize one for the both of us,” Damian took your hand and guided you to sit down beside him, pulling the top off of a container and tossing the lid without looking into the basket.”Before we were even down the road my father called to inform me of an emergency, and I left for an eight-day mission in Bialya. I owe you this, Trip.”

You sighed, deep enough to fill your nose with the enchanting scent of mint and leather.”Okay, okay I get it—you owe me a date, yadda yadda. You’re sweet, Damian,” you placed your hand on his knee,”But can we eat now? I’ve been craving the sandwiches you make all week.”

“Actually…” Damian dipped into the container. Plucking one of the strawberries from the bunch, he twirled it so you could see the shell of chocolate coating the core fruit, and your mouth instantly began to water; chocolate covered strawberries were a specialty food of his. You watched him bite into it with far too much investment. The chocolate settled cold on his tongue, the sharper tasting contrast in the flesh combining too well. Damian leaned closer slyly,”I would prefer if we eat dessert first.”

He tastes like chocolate. It coats his tongue as it protected the strawberry, almost as sweet as the nerves in your belly. His hand clung gently to the hairs at the lowest part of your neck, awakening the goosebumps on your skin from how pleasant he is, reminding you all at once that you can touch him too. Your hands take the revelation as a call to arms. One instantly winds in his hair, bringing a groan from his throat when you press him closer. The other meets his back under the layers of his clothing, a hillscape that your palms have mapped over and over again, digging tracks into the soil of his skin.

It soon becomes a dance. You swim up for air only to dive back down again as soon as your lungs are satisfied, the world drowning in the waves and fading away to somewhere you forget. Where were you again? All you knew was  _Damian_ , with his chocolate taste, his molten honey voice, his hands cupping your face and his warmth.

“ _Damian_ ,” you sighed pleasantly, and the word sent shivers up his spine. Never before had his own name sounded so appealing, never before had he heard it voiced by another and suddenly  _wanted_ to have that name. Each syllable rolled off your tongue in a dreamy breath. To make things better, it was nothing more than Damian. Not Damian Wayne, not Damian Al Ghul, not even Robin. Just Damian. There was something euphoric in the fact that you wanted  _him_  and him alone.

His hands had since lost all rationality when your lips met his, eagerly slipping down your cheeks and under your arms, taking too much pleasure in rounding your backside in order to take hold of your thighs. Damian used it as a method to pull you closer, satisfied with the completing sensation of your thighs wrapping around his legs. You didn’t seem opposed to sitting in his lap. Not at all, considering how your breath hitched and you proceeded to dig your fingers deeper into his shoulders. The sound stirred a want within him, coiling tightly in his belly as you kissed.

“Maybe we should have stayed home,” you laughed lightly.

Damian only hummed, occupying himself by drawing a line of pecks down your jaw, lips parted and breath warm. You could feel his smile on your skin. You wanted to feel it against yours again, but realized with a jolt that you were still in a semi-public setting and flushed as red as a cherry. Damian had secluded the both of you on the Northwestern side of the park, hidden in the shade of a willow tree with curtains of leaves sheltering the both of you, but there was still the possibility… Damian—obviously—didn’t seem to care much.

“You are divine,” Damian said, holding the words between your bodies. He took your wrist from his shoulder and kissed the veins and tendons there. His voice didn’t quiver, his grip never faltered, his lips nothing but a whisper on your fingers.”Do you know how much you  _enchant_ me, you absolute disaster? I swear that you are a [sorcerer/sorceress] in disguise and have charmed me. I have to question if  _this…_ any of this, is real when you look at me like that.”

There is a pull in your belly, a quiet wish to tell him that you are none of those things. You aren’t divine, you aren’t enchanting, and if anything  _you_ should be the one to question if any of this is real. Damian is a hero of legend, someone that will have stories told about him in the future, someone who  _is_ the future. You are just another extra on the stage. Just a person to look up at the sky as he flies by and murmur to yourself,  _woah. That’s Robin. Look at him go_.

But the sudden poetic lilt to his words can only mean one thing. His lips have already begun to climb down your throat, stirring the skin with a low hum of satisfaction as he goes. You almost consider suggesting a drive home. The part of you that  _wants this_ lashes out and flicks the thought away, drowning you in reassurances.  _No one will come to this end of the park, and no one will see you under the trees—it’s a chilly Sunday. You’re fine._

 _Tweet tweet_ , Damian’s phone chirped.

He ignores it, one hand in your hair and tilting your head aside, just enough space for his nose and lips to meet your neck. The other has ventured to your hip. With a pause to see if you object, Damian’s hand slithers under your shirt and slowly begins to press it upward.

 _Tweet tweet_ , the phone chirped diligently.

“Damian,” you called him, and almost curse because his touch has warped your voice into something akin to a moan.

You feel his teeth against your skin, lips pulled back into a devilish grin,”Begging for me so soon, beloved?”

“Your  _phone_ ,” you reminded. Upon your separation he could see the flash of dejection in your eyes. A phone call from that number was a call to arms, and one that Damian could not ignore as much as he wanted too. His fingers are long, elegant and strong when they squeeze your waist in a wordless apology. You slipped off his lap.

“I will amend this,” Damian promised, grabbing his phone. Before he went to answer the call, he swept down, plucked up your hand and applied a kiss to your knuckles,”I must take the car. We are close enough to your apartment where you could walk, but call Alfred if you don’t wish to.” A sarcastic grin grew on his face,”Think you can take it?”

“I’ll be fine.” You said, a laugh on the edge of your tone. It was surprisingly easy to catch Damian’s wrist, but somehow near-impossible to look into the depths of his Talia-inherited eyes. You squeeze his hand once,”Be safe.”

“As a very charming person once said to me,” Damian quipped,” _I’ll be fine._ ”

* * *

The walk home isn’t easy. But when would it ever be in Gotham City? You end up eating the chocolate covered strawberries Damian made, even if you had told yourself to save them for when he got home. Maybe it’s the kind of chocolate he uses or the lucky pick of strawberries, as the fruit settles kindly on your tongue, the chocolate melting in your mouth like warm liquid gold. Just thinking about making more once you get home sends you into a daze. That was your mistake.

With your thoughts consumed with the ideas of dipping other fruits in chocolate, your namesake came back to haunt you, or maybe it was just Gotham’s bad luck. Your boot caught on the edge of the sidewalk, sending the basket flying and it contents soaring, your knees scraping against the concrete in two sudden lashes of pain. You released a very dignified yelp with the fall. Having caught yourself on your hands, you curse at the sting and try to wring them out,” _Great._ ”

You can hear the footsteps of a group behind you like the clatter of horse hooves, and thus scramble to collect your bearings to make room for them. Gotham is nothing but alleyways. After haphazardly scooping up the basket’s holdings, you dodged into one to avoid a crowd. With the movement, you recognize another wound. This time it’s on your knee.

“Dammit,” you cursed, crouching down to examine it. In terms of injuries it wasn’t bad—you had seen much worse, courtesy of Damian’s nightlife—but it would still make your journey a hassle. Blood had begun to dribble down your knee in an unceasing flow, putting a slight limp in your gait, and a wince in your expression. But it was nothing in comparison to later events.

As soon as you are standing, an arm clamps around your shoulders. A rag is shoved against your mouth, burning your eyes with its scent. If you were smart, if you were a hero, you’d know a way out of this. But you’re just you. You breathe in without meaning too, and suddenly the world is a spinning dream of blacks, yellows, and grays.

* * *

The transition from unconsciousness to the blinded clarity of being alive is harsh. It’s like being pulled from the water just  _seconds_ before there’s enough water in your lungs to kill you, where you can feel the salt clawing down the back of your throat, clogging your airways and leading you down to the pit yet again. Fear is almost the opposite. It builds, a whisper in the dark, coming closer and closer until there’s nothing to scream into but it’s ugly shadow.

There is a light. It flickers from time to time, doubling and blurring in your vision, casting a mockery of you onto the dirtied stone floor. Your shoulders ache like you’d been carrying the weight of the world on them for a millennia, bent inward from your slack position knelt and cuffed to a pipe. The drugs have only just given way for you to awaken. Counting the number of times the lights flicker helps, and soon you are awake enough to register what you’re feeling.  _Fear_.

It is impossible to try and keep your breathing under control. The room you are in is small, made up of walls with thick, rusted red bricks, a table with an awkward leg, a chair, and a door. A door that is open, with a second light source casting along the glass-littered floor.

Then come the footsteps. Paced casually, like the walk of a person you’d hear on the street, just passing by. Your shoulders draw in tight to your body and you ask yourself,  _Who is it? Who has brought me to this hell?_

You wait. For the other shadow. For the laughter, with something in the tone missing, putting it off and turning it demonic. A voice, like a snake sliding through dry grass, and the gas filling up your lungs and making fear very, very real. But it is neither.

He’s just a man. Just someone. He could have been anyone. He had a gun, of course, held loosely in one hand like he was used to holding it. Nothing about him was really distinctive—maybe you weren’t the real extra in this story, because this man has the most basic features you had ever seen. He smiles, and that’s where you know something is off. It’s always in the eyes.

“Hello, there,” He says.

You try to think like Damian. What would he do in this situation? You dizzy yourself digging too deep into the concept, before he’s lifting your chin with the gun and forcing you to look at him.  _Stall_.

“Oh,” you sighed in mock relief. You let loose a laugh,”It’s just you. I thought it was going to be like… Scarecrow, or Joker or something.”

“Very funny, but I have just as much a reason to kill you as either of those bastards,” he spat, dropping your chin and dismissing you with a wave of the gun,”Robin put me away. Put me away for drug dealing— _ha!_ Don’t he know that  _everybody’s_ selling here? This is  _Gotham!_ You could go to the nearest Jo-Ann Fabrics and ask the clerk for some crack, and they’d sell it to you. I was doing it for my business—I was a restaurant owner, little [girl/boy]. Did you know that? That place was my everything, but because he put me away, I got my everything taken away.”

He strides across the room, plucking up a photo with one hand and shoving it in your face,”So now I gotta take  _his_ everything away. Right in front of him. Just like he did to me.”

The photo was from a couple months ago, while you were surrounded by the Batfamily after a full-scale Riddler vs. Falcone battle. You’d been so stressed and worried you’d finally convinced yourself to try and find him as soon as everything ended. As soon as you saw him in a group among Robinson park, you pulled your hood over your face, shoved past the police line and barreled toward him. Damian saw you coming and instantly wrapped his arms around you.

 _“My love, what are you_ doing  _here?”_ He asked, utterly delirious in the post-battle calm down.

“ _Did they hurt you? Are you alright?”_ You grasped the sides of his chest plate.

“ _No, no, I’m fine. Were you caught in the fight on your way here? Falcone had a couple cars—you could have gotten hurt.”_ Damian said.

You scoffed, turning his head to look at a long cut down his cheek,” _Who cares about me? You’re bruised and you have cuts_ everywhere—”

He took hold of both sides of your face. While he was serious often, there was always something underneath his words to show you how he was really feeling. Now there was almost nothing but compassion. _”_ I  _care about you, idiot_.”

Then he kissed you. In front of the police, in front of the bats, in front of the  _media._ Vicky Vale had an article out by the hour.  _ROBIN KISSES MYSTERY [GIRL/BOY]_. The news faded eventually, and you had come out of the scandal unscathed thanks to Damian and your faithful hoodie—Damian had been teased for months by the Teen Titans, and Gar  _still_ brought it up at meetings apparently. The image was of that kiss, but from an angle no one else had gotten before. An angle with your  _face_.

“Okay. Death threats:  _check_. Monologue:  _check_. What’s next on the villain checklist?” You rolled your eyes, shuffling in order to help the ache in your muscles.”Oh, wait, I know— _he’s_ gonna come and you’re gonna get your ass kicked!” You jerked forward in a threatening manner, baring your teeth and bringing the words up from low in your throat.

“Do you  _seriously_ think he doesn’t have a plan for this sort of thing? Look, buddy, this isn’t my first rodeo. This is  _definitely_ not his, either. By doing this, you’ve punched your ticket for underestimating him,” you said,”Robin can take your life away from you. Send you away  _forever_.”

Your statement had seemed to blind him, so you continued,”Robin’s an expert at that kind of thing. Robin is really great at everything, actually. For one, he’s an  _amazing_ kisser. Takes your breath away. He’s also, like, super hot under the suit, with the  _nicest eyes_ and the most handsome smile you’ve ever seen. Have I mentioned how good he is in bed? Because he has an absolutely  _massive_ —”

“That’s _enough!_ ” Your captor yelled. He glanced at the duct-tape on the table, and you knew this was your only chance before you were silenced.

So you began to sing.” _My boyfriend’s back and you’re gonna get in trouble_ ~,” you said. He was fuming now, hands shaking at his sides, face swollen and red like a balloon about to be popped.” _You see him comin’ better head out on the double~._ ”

“Shut up,” he pointed at you roughly.

“He’s behind you,” you said smugly.

He flinched as if to check, but stopped himself, not giving you the satisfaction. He barked,”Do you really think I’m  _that stupid?_  He’s not behind me. You’re just playing games. You’re just a stupid, mindless brat who only thinks their special because they had Robin’s attention for a little while.”

He had gotten all up in your face now, and you had to withhold the urge to begin praying. You met his eyes and felt your body tense with the weight of his words—while he may have certainly been right, you would never let him know that. So you spat in his face.“Just a stupid, mindless brat who only thinks their special because they had Robin’s attention for a little while?” you hissed,”Honestly? Sounds more like you than me.”

A hand reaches out and politely taps him on the shoulder. He spun around, only to be met, quite appropriately, with the roughest strike you’d ever seen Robin throw. The man went flying into the table. With a single groan, he had collapsed into the splintered wood with his gun dismantled by Damian’s hands.

“Beloved,” Damian cursed. In seconds he was behind you, working away at your binds. They gave too quickly for you to understand. But as always, Damian caught you before you gave out, embracing you deeply against his chest. The  _R_ was cold against your ear when Damian began,”Forgive me—I should have driven you to the Manor, I should have just skipped out on the mission—this should have  _never_ happened, and you were only captured because of my own mistakes.” Damian took hold of your wrists, pressing his lips against the burns of the zip-ties, reassuring and warm.” I am  _never_ there when you  _need_ me. I have failed you.”

“What are you talking about?” You sighed. You pressed your forehead to Damian’s, closing your eyes to avoid his mask’s empty gaze,”You’re always there on time.”

Damian leveled your gazes, thumbs still smoothing over the burns, breaths mixing in the open air. He must have noticed your absence immediately, found the basket tipped over, and used it as a clue to find you now. Clearly, he had been in a mad dash: his uniform had been cut in places and he had a few bruises forming, no doubt consequences of his haste in the emergency.

“I must ask… you looked upset when he called you mindless. Do you really think you are nothing but a toy for me? Something I play with until you’re interesting and toss you?” Damian asked, brows knit together.

You sighed, slowly,”Only.. Sometimes. But it’s not like—”

“You idiot. You are not special because of me or how you have my attention. You are special because you are everything  _but_ that. You are beautifully clumsy, like chocolate covered strawberries, and somehow have decided that I of all people are worth your time and affection.” Damian said. He guided you both to a stand, capturing your fingers in his own,”Do you understand why I am doing this? Why I fight? It is not because of my heritage—it is for people like you. So that you may live your beautiful, simple, happy lives in peace. I fight for you and your happiness because it is more valuable.”

“Than your  _life_?” You asked slowly, squeezing Damian’s hand.

“Of course. You  _are_ my everything, and I would do anything to protect you and your immortal normalcy,” Damian said. He bows his head. It is subtle, which comes as a surprise; Damian was either 100% in or 100% out. Now, he spoke somewhere in between, a softness that is nothing more than a statement. It isn’t a declaration or a roar. It is just a promise, and that’s all you could ever want from him.”I love you.”

“I love you too, you ridiculous young man,” you beamed.

> **BONUS:**

”You  _do realize_  he had you at gunpoint, right? And you were  _teasing_ him. How are you not  _dead_ yet?” Damian asked, staring at you oddly.

“I have a little luck,” you said, and winked at him,”And a pretty birdy watching over me.”


	15. The Swan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You’re unsure if he’s insulting or complimenting. Turns out, it’s usually both.

“Hobbi,” he says. Damian’s voice echoes like the waters of a pond rippling, the liquid filling your ears and creating a barrier against your hearing. He sounds far away. He sounds stern and angry, but you’ve known him long enough to know the difference; he’s worried. You don’t know where you are, you don’t know where he is, but the power of the emotion gives an easy visual. Damian’s thoughts are a storm and his head is swimming, but he’s calling you by that name again.

The bindings of sleep begin to come loose. You soon recognise the feel of your mind in your body, of your fingers wrapped around hard sheets, of how you’ve been asleep and you don’t want to wake up. The word turns into a story in your mind and you’re almost ready to succumb again. Then, Damian speaks again.

“You idiot,” he spits, probably sitting beside the bed (bed?) you’re sleeping in. It takes a moment to register that he’s not speaking to you, but himself. The suggestion shuts you up immediately. There are railings on either side, and Damian’s watch brushes against them when he speaks.”Letting them risk themselves for your case. Fool.”

He paused abruptly when you shifted, gaze shooting up and widening when he realized he’d been caught. The moss turned quickly to jade,”Stop pretending to sleep, L/N. I know you’re awake.”

“Barely,” you groaned, rubbing your hands down your face.”But… what happened last night? Why am I…?”

The morning sun pooled over your bed and cut across Damian’s face, temporarily blinding you when you glanced in it’s direction. The movement showed you where you were; the in-home infirmary. All of the sounds you heard in your sleep settle onto your shoulders as the water pulls back. The washing machine from the next room rumbled dutifully, the clock on the wall chirped and ticked with each passing moment, and the morning birds were calling to each other loudly outside the open window. It had to have been at least six in the morning.

“The medication will make you struggle to remember things, but considering the size of the bullets Alfred pulled out of you, you’re going to want to need it.” Damian said smartly.

And he was right. The medicine was enough for you to barely feel your abdomen and made lifting your arms feel bodiless and unnaturally heavy. Recalling why Alfred had to take a bullet out of you was near-impossible, for it was like digging in a box for something that just wasn’t there.

Damian saw your confusion and supplied, though a little resentful,”You decided to help me on my case—without asking my permission—and proceeded to venture off on your own, coming back with two bullet wounds and evidence that I was meant to get.”

“Oh-oh yeah,” you said, your brain feeling more and more like a balloon about to pop.

The memories soon swirled back into the drain of your brainpan like muddied water. Damian had been buried in a case, denying every chance to take a break, see friends or family, and to live like a normal human being. After he’d finally gotten up for a bathroom break, you’d decided it was your duty to try and help him out. Not like he’d let you. So you used some of your own connections to collect the details, went off, came back with a couple bullets in you and two love letters clutched in your hand.

The murders Damian had committed himself to solving were crimes of passion. It was the reason why you had the injuries you now suffered from; the assailant was ruthlessly committed and had nothing to lose. You thought that they were fine and you’d just see Alfred, beg and plead with him not to tell Damian about the injury, and then reveal the evidence to your boyfriend (that you “miraculously found”) and have him feel accomplished for solving it (mostly) on his own. Though it may have been cruel to take what you did away from him, you would always choose to take the bullet for him than vise-versa. Damian would never share that opinion. You were unsure if that made you grateful or upset. All you knew, at that moment, was that you wished you had never woken up.

“I’m sorry, dames,” you said, but didn’t let the weight of your words fly by him,”But you needed a break. I know what your limits are, but I don’t want you to try and kill yourself trying to surpass them. I just wanted you to be happy, and healthy—please, understand that before you start yelling.”

He took in a tight breath of air between his teeth, bowing his head,”I’m not going to yell at you, you fool. But you should have asked me—”

“I did,” you interrupted. When he didn’t raise his head, you tossed a hand over the railing of your bed as a peace offering. You wouldn’t retreat until he took it first. ”But you… you didn’t listen, Damian. I just wanted you to actually make it to tomorrow, but you never listen to me. You know how much I hate the risk of our jobs—and I will do anything to avoid you getting hurt, always. No matter if you’re just feeling better for a couple hours, I’ll do it.”

“Yes, but when you are the one that gets hurt, it is the same philosophy,” Damian said, looking at you sharply. His fist had raised as if to strike the rail, but unwound in mid-air, descending onto it instead. His voice did not soften, but he huffed an exhausted,”Hobbi…”

He hated this back and forth as much as you did. It was always,”I have to protect you.” Then,”No, I have to protect you.” Again,”No, I have to protect YOU.” It made your head hurt, and would probably be the argument you’d be having until the day you died. The thing that mattered at the conversation’s core was more valuable.

You would automatically insist it was Damian. He was the heir to the Waynes, he’d been doing this longer, Gotham needed him, and… you loved him. There was no denying that. It made you biased, but the instinctual thing about love was the need to protect.

If Damian admitted anything to you, it was that he knew you were worth more than him. You were more compassionate and loved by others, Gotham needed you, and he loved you. More than anything. If the world’s reaction to your death was anything like those created in his nightmares, then… he couldn’t let that happen to you.

Though you could continue the cycle for days, one of you always realized how useless it was arguing about it. This time it had to be you.

“You said that word again,” you smiled, tossing your other arm over your face to shield away the sunlight. Damian nodded without quite registering what you said. He breathed deeply through his nose for a few moments, trying to steady himself, the lull of the steady beat already beginning to put you to sleep. It made you think about laying beside him. A phantom of security blanketed you at just the very thought, and you longed to sooth him in order to earn a chance for cuddling.

Damian hummed. Your fingers wiggled invitingly in his direction. When he collects them a blissful little bubble pops in his belly, like the nest of birds singing happily outside had landed on his shoulders in a flutter of chorus.

“What does it mean?” You asked.

Damian cocked his head to the side. He felt the outline of your fingers in his hand, the satisfying lock of them closing around one another, the roll of your joints and the experience within each digit. In his most private of emotions he dared to do something Jon deemed a fantasy. Though, to Damian’s surprise, his version of the term was much more innocent than the usual meaning. It was puppy-love. He’d dream of small things; your pride in him glowing like the sun, your fingers entwining with his own, your body wrapped up in his. Your embrace was as unwavering as the moon’s promise to be there, even behind a shadow. It was compensation for all of the attention the League had never given him as a child. As stupid as he believed his hopes to be, he could never resist your open arms.

“Are you sure you want to know?” He asked.

When you nodded, smiling in the way that made him want to slap himself, he slid on top of your sheets with a flourish. Before he even had the chance to ask you to make room for him, your arms were bound around his torso and your nose was stuffed into his chest. Every muscle and sinew within him coiled together like a snake with the affection. But he could never resist you. His body melts into the embrace, arms scooping you closer to shield you from the sun and other dangerous enemies.

“It means I hate you,” Damian said, like he was praising an elegant classical music piece.

That brought a muffled laugh from you, vibrating against his ribcage,”I don’t doubt that. But really, what does it mean?”

Damian heaved an overly-dramatic sigh, as if it was your fault you didn’t know what it meant.”It’s a term of affection. Like my beloved, or my love.”

The first response Damian received was your fingers bunching in his shirt, body language shifting so that you were not so much as snuggled into him, but hiding in him. The tips of your ears had gone red. That had definitely been the right wording. He watched all of your tells line up one by one and show themselves; your toes curled and your feet soon wound together, another attempt to keel in on yourself; your shoulders came up to press against your ears, fruitless when it came to hiding your deep blush from him. Then came the smile. If his ten-year-old self knew he would become a lovestruck idiot at the thought of his beloved’s shy smile, the he certainly would have done a lot more that just spit on the informer’s shoes… His present self was even berating him for falling so quickly.

“Are… a lot of the other words you use to describe me like that, Damian?” You asked, brows now tucked into the valley of his chest.

“Usually. Or I’m calling you an idiot, though I’ll never tell you the difference between the others.” Damian said.

“Geez,” you cursed, chuckling,”And I thought you weren’t one for nicknames. Does this mean I should call you something sweet in return?”

“Please don’t,” Damian groaned. But that didn’t stop you; after working up the courage, you wormed out of his embrace and slid upward, propped up on the pillows and now holding his chin. The growl he emitted didn’t sway you. All of his intimidation tricks were useless against you, so he must be desperate enough to try and use them. A perfect opportunity to embarrass him…

“My beautiful moon,” you opted. Damian sneered.

“Sunrise,” you suggested. Damian didn’t take to that one either, now panning a stone expression at you.

“My soul,” you said, now stroking his face; he had such angular features, every edge so sharp and cut and jagged. Damian’s brows drew together.

“Moonrise,” you decided. After rubbing away the furrow, you realized that the only thing soft on him was his lips. Having recognised the sudden attention they were getting, they parted so that you could run a gentle thumb on the bottom.

“That doesn’t even make sense. The moon doesn’t rise, it just—”

“Shh,” you laid your finger upon his lips. They then swept to each side of his face, bringing your foreheads together in a dramatic flourish of movement,”I know. You’re so smart, my sweet moonrise, you blow me away—”

Damian clicked his tongue to cut off your escalating crescendo of laughter,”How romantic of you. Going to serenade me, now? Tchaikovsky is a favorite of mine, though Camille Saint-Saëns is a lovely composer too.”

You licked your lips in thought. Then, you bargained.“Say it, and I will.”

This time, he doesn’t hesitate. He never hesitates with this phrase. The first time it came to him he couldn’t fathom… but now, there’s no way of ignoring it. The words gather on his tongue and slip off with the grace of flowing water. He sighed, “I love you too, beloved.”

The smile you give is light as the morning sunlight. Your hum feels the room as a lullaby would, a whisper, a blanketing shadow of protection layering down his back. Careful of your injuries, Damian reclined into you, letting his cheek lay against your thighs and the sunlight splay against your legs. Your fingers automatically began to roll across his scalp. Briefly, he felt like the little boy who would curl up in his mother’s arms for comfort. She’d only done it once. He felt a relief in feeling the warmth overcome him again, the safety of a loved one. This time he knew he was truly, unconditionally loved, regardless of how ridiculous it was.

As The Swan by Camille Saint-Saëns filled his ears, thrumming in your chest and between your lips, there was a whisper of,”I love you too, Damian Wayne. No matter how impossible you may be.”


	16. I Just Feel You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a recent argument determining the revealing of a relationship, Y/N and Damian are at odds. Now, they also have a mission to take care of.

“Look, I know they hate each other  _normally_ —” Garfield says, just loud enough for Damian to catch from the pilot’s chair.

There’s a chorus of shushing from the two beside him; Raven stares Garfield down narrowly, and Wally shakes his head. He continues, softer than before. But now that they have Damian’s attention, it’s no use.

“Y/N and Damian are mean to each other all the time. But they still  _sit_ by each other and stuff—right now, they’re not even looking in the other’s direction… What happened?” Garfield asked, no doubt looking at the space between Damian and you. Damian tuned out of the conversation: he didn’t need the reminding of the large gap between your two bodies.

He felt the familiar feeling of Raven looking him over. Though he had tried many times to overcome her empathetic advancements, he had yet to learn how to block out stronger emotions from her viewing. It was how she had learned that you and Damian weren’t sworn enemies, but in fact, lovers. Regardless, no one on the team would ever believe her if she spilled your secret. There had been a time where you had both truly hated each other, and nothing had seemed to change from then on to your teammates—and it was going to stay that way.

“Well, you know I can’t read Hex—but Robin…” Rachel paused, lips tightening, before she continued warily, “Robin is… frustrated. I can’t pick up anything else besides…”

Wally and Garfield leaned in. Damian clenched his teeth and his hands until the seams of his gloves began to tear. Having noticed the sudden tension, she said, ”His determination to get this mission over with.”

Damian knew what she had meant to say; he had been feeling love. He had been feeling it since he first confessed the words to you, and a part of him hated it. He became dizzy with adoration when you even looked at him, jumped at the chance to impress you or bend to your every will, and carried a deep sensitivity for you in his heart. Everytime he gets the feeling his mother’s words come back to him, full of sharp longing for something she no longer had.

 _Love is a weakness, Damian_ , she said. Talia dipped her fingers into the sand,  _when your enemies discover your love for another being, if they truly want to destroy you and everything that you stand for, then they will take that love from you. It is best to not dwell on these thoughts at all._ She let the sand spill out of her fingers like blurry gold and raised her chin as if to pull herself from a memory.  _Do you understand, my son?_

To Talia’s credit, this was one of the few pieces of her ideology she had given him that was correct. It was one of the reasons why Damian kept your relationship a secret, and another why you were arguing. Though he was thankful for your ability to protect yourself… Damian knew how meaningless power is in the face of death. Regardless of what even you could do.

He could feel the energy sparking off of you in frustrated waves, regardless of how hard you were trying to control the output of energy. Damian forced himself to stay rigid. Being the ward and adopted daughter of Zatanna, you had been trained to control and hone your powerfully influential magical powers. Like most warlocks, your magic came from within and was different from those belonging to other magical people. You had a talent for empathy and manipulating the likeliness of things, and in your current state, Damian felt like it was very likely for you to break up with him. The thought stirred a hollowness inside him that reminded him of his mother again.

Arguments came up in all relationships. It was just something that happened, even in the healthiest and happiest people. Before you had begun to date, every word or breath could spark a dispute. Damian had been threatened by your potential and your kindness. You had disliked his brashness and bold tongue. How you had come to where you were now Damian had too much of an idea, though this was the opposite of a problem; you had now been dating for five years, and he was sure that he was getting used to the feeling you instilled in him. Addicted to it, even.

To know that  _this_ could end it all—the fact that he had only wanted to protect you—that you are his weakness, and he  _needed_ to keep you from harm—spun him out of control.

“Robin,” said a voice softly.

Damian turned a little too sharply, only to find the wide, concerned eyes of the team’s leader, Starfire. She touched his shoulder and gently told him, “You landed the jet. It is time for you to change now. Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Damian said, blinking rapidly and pushing out of his seat. He must have been thinking for longer than he’d thought, as the jet had already cleared out. You alone remained among the already departed Titans, and Damian found his eyes lingering on your form. He shook himself out of his daze and said stiffly, “I’m coming, I’m coming…”

The team members that didn’t know your and Damian’s secret identities were aware that you would be infiltrating the venue together. But not as Damian Wayne and Y/N L/N, Gotham lovebirds who had already received invitations to the event on behalf of Wayne Enterprises.

Tonight, a peace-meeting between two countries who had long since been at war was taking place. A peace-treaty signing was tomorrow, but tonight was the celebratory dinner. The League, wanting to stop the war and save a couple lives, enlisted the Titan’s help after word got out of a potential attack on one of the two leaders. That meant that Raven, Starfire, Beast Boy, and Kid-Flash would patrol the perimeter, while you, Damian, and Jon Kent would be stationed inside.

After shoving himself into a tux, Damian planted himself to your left and waited for your critiquing. Though neither of you was very well versed in the fashion department, Damian preferred to have you brush the loose locks out of his face and adjust his tie anyway. Instead of your fingers slinking up his lapels he is greeted with silence.

“We should go inside,” suggested Damian, coughing to stifle the note of hope in his voice.

“Yeah.”

You didn’t look at him when you slid your hand into the crook of his elbow, but Damian knew that was the last thing you wanted to do at the moment. It would look odd if you weren’t touching upon your entry. You were renown in the socialite community for the puppy-love between you both, constantly touching at all times, standing much closer than necessary and never baring to leave the other’s side. (You still believed that Damian’s end of these affections was nothing but an act, but only he knew that they weren’t). Damian found the bitterness in his stomach sizzle into nothingness with the lack of enthusiasm in your touch, bowed his head, and lead you out of the jet.

As Damian walked you through the trees and toward the venue where the party was hosted, he watched you look back mournfully at the jet as it camouflaged back into the trees, wanting more than anything to adopt the same ability and hide.

Jon had been saying for years that Damian was the best and worst person to go through when it came to advice, often adding that was just how it was with best friends. They gave each other advice and helped however they could. Damian had never quite understood this, as he was all too aware of how one-sided their friendship was, but tonight was different… He was asking Jon for advice. What had the world  _come_ to?

“Okay, first off, I need you to tell me what is going on between you two,” Jon said. He took a glance around, holding a glass of water in one hand and pushing up his glasses with the other.

Damian steeled his expression. “She wants to reveal our secret to the team.”

“ _That_  secret?” Jon inquired. When Damian nodded, Jon’s lips drew into a thin frown, “I mean, you guys don’t really tell me much about how you got together and everything. But it’s always been secret, right?”

“Of course,” Damian said, “We hated each other—like how I hated you—but something changed. This is the biggest dispute we’ve had since that time. And if we  _hated_ each other  _then_ …”

Sensing the panic in his voice, Jon put a hand on Damian’s shoulder, something he shifted under, “Oh, I’m sure it’s not  _that_ bad. It couldn’t be. Here—tell me your fondest memory of her.”

“Jon, I can’t tell you about something like  _that_ ,” Damian smirked, trying to calm himself.

He’d never been this stressed before— _never_ —and it was startling how it affected him. They were on a mission. And yet, Damian was off-topic and distracted. He was making jokes, too, which was no doubt a cause of the drink he had in his hand.

Jon gave a little chuckle, but shook his head all the same, “C’mon. I’m serious. There’s got to be something, Damian, otherwise, you wouldn’t be this upset.”

“I’m not  _upset_ ,” Damian sneered.

When Jon raised a playful eyebrow, Damian turned his gaze away and waved his hand dismissively. It became clear that Jon was not going to give up, due to the expectant silence on his end, and it eventually managed to squeeze something out of him. Damian tossed back his glass and began to explain.

“Damian,” you murmured softly.

An unusual warmth settled in Damian’s stomach like hot coffee on a cold morning, his neck reddening under his collar and his heart hammering wildly. He didn’t know what to do. His eyes wandered from the bandages wrapped around you—the bloodied instruments used to pull four bullets out of you, ones that Damian thought had taken you from him—and the upturned palm you held in his direction.

You were alright.  _You were alright_.

The words rang in Damian’s mind with the vibrant enthusiasm of wedding bells. Ridiculously, his palms were sweating and his heart was still performing its chorus, but it didn’t matter—none of it mattered at all—because you were alright. You were safe and happy and alive. You were with him, at his side, and he felt a sudden wash of relief that flooded him to the brim and over.

His arms came under yours to wrap around your back, so fast and so hard that you’d been half-lifted off of the infirmary bed and let out an involuntary puff of air. He did everything he could to memorize the moment. He breathed you in, felt your bones under his fingers, felt your heart beating against his ear. Your body tensed with the show of affection, only for you to fall back into him like you belonged there.

“Darling, it’s okay,” you cooed, giggling slightly, “I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“I will  _always_ worry about you, you clumsy—reckless—ridiculous—” Damian pulled away just far enough to view your face, wanting to do nothing more than keep you at his side like this as a constant. Then he knew you would be as safe as he could have you.

Your fingers slid from his shoulders to cup each side of his neck. Damian shifted with the new nature of the action, unwinding as you began to rub circles on the top of his spine. Your lips were warm against his cheek, and he hated how he closed his eyes and hummed for you to continue. He hated it. Or perhaps,  _he_ did not hate it at all, but the part of him that still clung to the League of Shadow’s ideologies.

 _For this moment_ , Damian promised, _I’ll forget._

“I love you, Damian Wayne,” you whispered, eyes now closed and smile still fresh against his jaw, “And that will never, ever change.”

(“Cheesy, much?” Damian scoffed over your melodic laughter.)

(Hiding your laughter in the back of your hand, you pressed yourself under his chin and smiled, “I know you love me too.”)

(“I do,” Damian said. The words filled him with something he was beginning to feel every time he caught a spare moment with you, every time you looked at him and showed him that you understood. He smirked and mockingly whispered in your ear, praying that you didn’t notice the note of seriousness his tone carried, “And that will never, ever change.”)

“She’d been hurt, and I went to check on her condition. Then she told me that she loved me.” Damian said, staring deeply at a random person’s shoes.

Jon’s eyebrows raised over the rim of his bespectacled face, trying to weave into Damian’s line of sight to figure out what he was thinking. Damian raised his head and tightened his expression, but just slow enough for Jon to catch the misery he was hiding.

“I didn’t know that she dropped the three-words yet. Wow.” Jon said. He gave Damian a wary look when he deposited his glass on a tray and traded it for a filled one. “I thought you guys were like, in the first couple months and everything.”

“We’ve been dating for an eternity. I can understand why she wants to tell the team, but she is…  _mine_. If someone knew about us… an enemy… All I have ever wanted is to protect her, Jon. She is the best thing I have in my life. The team can’t know—it’s a risk. I still can’t bear the thought of you being among those who keep our secret.”

Damian spoke casually and carelessly as he always did, but the way his chin upturned snootily and the streak of condescension in his voice had both dropped out. That was when Jon knew this was growing dire.

“Thanks,” Jon said sarcastically. “And why don’t you just tell her that?  _You’re the best thing in my life, I want to protect you, blah blah blah_. Even if you can’t agree on something, you could always try and compromise with something else. Go talk to her.”

Damian let several ideas and plans simmer in his mind, trying to sort through one that was better than Jon’s. He could go out and get flowers, but that would mean abandoning the mission… Propose? He didn’t have a ring, and you were already mad at him so it was unlikely you would say yes. Just continue with the mission and hope that it solves itself? Also unlikely. That meant, to Damian’s horror, that Jon’s idea was the best and had the most positive outcomes.

“Fine,” Damian said, trying to reason that it was better to have a Kent-plan than no plan at all.

After settling on this, Damian realized what he was getting himself into and tipped back his glass. The liquid hit his throat like liquid gold and diamond. Before he could finish it, Jon took it from his hand.

“Also, Dami—lay off of the champagne, okay? It makes you… honest.” Jon said, offering him an awkward smile. After some consideration, Jon offered the glass back, “On second thought, take another glass with you…”

He recognized your dress among many others, the lacy black and green matching his tuxedo and tie as you had planned together. Though he hated matching, hated wearing anything that restricted his movement, the way your face lit up the first time you did something like this made him change his mind. He could stand it for one night, especially if there was more blade-room.

Damian’s hands were sweaty again. He didn’t like spilling his guts to you like this—the less you and everyone else knew, the less an enemy could get out of you, and the less likely of a chance that you would be hurt. That was why this entire mess started.

Why couldn’t he have just  _resisted you?_ Talia had always said he was prone to attachment, that his want for love and the way he carried it would be his downfall.

 _But I love you, mother_ , Damian had told her.

Talia’s smile fell as if she was disappointed with herself, and pulled her hand from his face.  _I know._

That is what he should have done. That’s what he was supposed to say, as his mother had warned him again and again. He should have tried harder to stamp out the affection growing for you the moment it rooted in his lungs. Damian should have taken his hand from your face after you told him the truth, and he should have only said,  _I know_. Now, he had already begun to compromise the mission for your sake. His love for his father and Richard had already killed him once, and so it terrified him what lengths he would go to for you.

(He pictures the League, him at its head, a perfect world molded by him for you and you alone. He pictures you happy, and a part of him whispers that this cannot be possible with him at your side.)

A possessive jealousy conquers him like a ship in a sea-storm, and the dark thoughts evaporate. You are there, shifting uncomfortably under the gaze of your company, who looks far too invested in both you and your attire. Before they can take another step closer, Damian is slipping a second glass of your favorite drink into your hand and slipping his arm around your waist.

“Excuse us,” Damian said icily. Your company throws him a surprised look.

Damian tore through the crowd, now clasping your wrist instead of your back. Dragging him backward, you huffed, “Oh, so  _now_ you’re suddenly so interested in me. Just  _had_ to come to my rescue, didn’t you?”

He slowed your walk, stopping at the edge of the dancefloor. Though he wanted to growl and glare, he tried to remember Jon’s words and calm himself. In times where he was panicking or unstable, you would use your powers to calm him, so much so that he felt your energies had become a part of him after so long.

Damian wasn’t surprised to see that you were wearing gloves; your powers mostly came through touch, and if you didn’t stay calm they could burst through and cause an accident. It was one of the things that made him feel that you trusted him. You didn’t wear your gloves around him when you were alone, and even though you were often terrified of hurting him, you’d still cave if he begged you to put him to rest or soothe him. The warmth of your fingers against his face and the magic flowing within him was as familiar as a sword’s handle in his grasp.

“I have more to say,” Damian said.

Your expression swam between furiosity and confusion for a moment, trying to figure out what he was now willing to communicate. He easily understood. When the argument first began, he insisted that his word was law and didn’t provide anything more than that, ignoring your side of the argument and slamming the doors behind him. Guilt wrapped its hands around his throat and kept him from saying another word.

“We’re on a mission. It can wait.” You said, then tried to pull from his grip.

“It can’t,” Damian insisted, setting his empty glass on a nearby table. He took yours and set it beside his. Then, realizing that the dance-floor was much less crowded, sorted you both into a dancing position and joined the fray of those waltzing. “I am not going to have the courage to speak my thoughts later, and it is pertinent to our argument that I give a better explanation.”

You remained silent, and suddenly the roles were switched. You wanted to leave more than anything, and Damian had too many things to say, creating fissures in his sides and making him lose focus.

“You want to tell the team about our relationship. Logan, West, even Koriand’r—they are not capable of keeping secrets if it doesn’t affect them. They would spill to someone, then another, and another until everyone knew. Everyone, including those who want to hurt you. I could not… I could not live with myself if you were ever taken from me, Y/N,” Damian confessed. He bowed his head awkwardly, “I only yelled because I realized what would happen if your wish came true.”

Damian waited for your gasp of  _oh!_ He waited, hoping for you to fling your arms around his neck and for you to understand, for you to see his point of view, for you to just inherently  _know_ what he would do if you were ever taken from him… He knew what death was like, and he would never let you discover it in the way that he did.

But you don’t say anything. You just stare at him, and when he prompts you for an answer, you only shake your head and sigh.

Damian realizes,”You don’t believe me.”

How could you not believe him? All he had ever wanted—all he had ever wished for—was your happiness. He had never spoken this to you until now. But you were an empath, and you had shared moments together of the deepest intimacy. You had seen his memories. Read his mind. Wiped away his nightmares and replaced them with the best dreams he had. When you looked into him, did you not see the obvious, even if he tried to hide it?

“Damian…” You said slowly, shaking your head. “I mean… you can’t really blame me. When I look into your mind you’re always shielding things from me, so I can never know when you’re telling me the truth. Besides that, what you said about Kori and them talking is only a chance. You don’t know them like I do—the Titans would never—”

Maybe it was subconscious. Damian had never considered it until now, but he was capable of hiding things from telepaths and empaths. It was something the League had trained him to do, as there was always the risk of leaking information without intention, and Damian must have gripped those thoughts most deeply just in case of intrusion. He never thought…  _you_ …

Damian suddenly took hold of your wrist again. A man on a mission, he pulled you through the loose braid of dancers and toward the edge of the room, where he shoved open the patio doors and swept you out into the night. Still, he kept walking, you following a step behind until you reached the part of the wall without windows.

“Damian, what are we—”

He lifted your wrist. At once, you realized what he was doing, but Damian was faster and you wouldn’t dare risk using your powers on him. He could feel the air thicken with your concern. But he continued anyway, pulling off one of your gloves and tossing it behind him. He made sure to take your sleeve, then attempted to apply your hand to his cheek.

“Wait, c’mon—Damian, I could hurt you—I could hurt someone else—”

“No, you won’t,” Damian said. Your hand hovered an inch from his face, and his shoulders were already relaxing at the thought of you mending him. Taking all of his broken parts and putting him back together. Seeing him, for once, without restriction.

His voice became soft, intimate even, trying to convey that it was just you and him here.

“I trust you,” Damian whispered. His hand climbed from your sleeve. When it met skin he saw you tense with fear, and when it finally breached passed your wrist and pressed your palm flat to his skin, you were still holding back.

He pulled you so that you could only see his eyes, could only see him, and promised, “It’s only you and I. I only want you safe.”

Damian drew himself out of the cage he locked himself in, drawing every piece of himself into your touch. He thought about his worries about the risks, again and again. He focussed on his want to be alone with you, just you, again and again. He drew,  _I’m sorry_ ,  _I’m sorry_ , again and again into your palm and hoped you could read it.

Gently, you pulled away from him, steadying yourself on his shoulders and staring at him under a new light. The world seemed to be spinning. You smiled gently, “Alright. But when  _will_ we get to tell them?”

“When I’ve made you the perfect world,” Damian said.

You drew your arms around his neck, pressing yourself closer into his embrace. There was little hesitancy in your touch now, and Damian encouraged it by reciprocating. You relaxed into one another, becoming accustomed to the touch, feeling yourself moving on from the fear and into the moonlight. While you were just absentmindedly swaying to the music, Damian began to navigate, spinning you along in gentle squares across the golden-lit patio before a great garden.

“Indulge me. How are you planning to make me this  _perfect world?_ ”

“Well, when I become Batman…”


	17. Laila

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We called you Laila because you were born at night. In thanks, the sky put special stars in your eyes so that you could talk to them.

“When should we tell her?”

Laila has long since been taught the value of eavesdropping. Her father was very good at it, just like he was very good at many other good things. He was a good man, and nothing could ever change that for Laila, regardless if he also knew how to do some bad things too. Like eavesdropping and listening. Listening in particular.

He taught her during the winter time, when she had just turned four. She knew for a fact that she was born on January 1st, just as the sun was setting over the hill of Gotham’s country with the dawn of a new year. She was born when the stars were freshly twinkling in the heavens, and her father would whisper to her as he laid her down to bed;  _We called you Laila because you were born at night. In thanks, the sky put special stars in your eyes so that you could talk to them._

 _But I’ve never heard the stars speak, baba._ She had said.

 _There are stars in my eyes, too. That’s how I know that they don’t speak like you and I, but whisper._ He said, swiping his thumb at her cheek,  _Do you hear them?_

She listened hard, and sure enough came the whispers of the midnight. They closed their eyes and listened together. The wind weaved it’s voice through the barren branches outside, rattling softly against the Manor’s walls like a visitor knocking politely for entry. Laila remembered gasping,  _Baba! I heard them!_

 _And what did they tell you?_ He asked.

Laila pouted. She had only heard the rattling of their knuckles against the siding of their home, and drew her brows together,  _I… I dunno. Did you hear anything?_

 _Yes, I did_ , her father said. Laila leaned in closer in excitement. Her father laid his large hand upon her cheek, like a pillow had covered half her face, and spoke.  _They told me that they love you, more than every constellation and every planet they hold._

Laila had smiled.  _Can you tell them that I love them too, baba?_

 _They already know, my love,_ he spoke. He smiled when she put her small hand over his, and leaned down to plant a kiss on her face,  _Just as I know how much I love you. Rest well, my adored._

Although that night had been nearly two months ago, Laila had never faltered each night; she paused her dreaming, just for a moment, to whisper a goodnight to the stars. She was a very good listener because of it.

Sometimes her father was there, and sometimes mother was in his place. Laila would never mind this. Her mother was warm and blanketed her in safety, and while her father would tell her about her childhood or his work, mother wove intricate tales of bats slaying laughing dragons, and birds flying farther than anyone had ever before. She was a wonderful story-teller. Her voice was tender and caring, and so her stories easily put Laila at ease.

Now, her mother’s voice is tight and quiet with worry. It’s muffled by the great, mahogany door to the office belonging to Laila’s father. When they were all together, father would call her mother, and mother would call him  _baba_ for her. But now that they are alone, she calls him Damian.

“I don’t think she’s old enough to know yet, of course,” father said, his footsteps pausing to rest where the window was. It was a stormy night, which muffled their voices, but at least kept them from knowing Laila was listening in. “But she’s going to find out, and soon.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t avoid it with her. Maybe, if she asks, we just tell her,” mother proposed. She was across the room, and something about the distance between her parents put Laila off.

“No. We can’t. I am still… wary. What if Ra’s… he knows of Laila, now… Or someone else ever…” Father muttered to himself.

“Then the earlier we tell her the more prepared she’ll be. You’re training her, yes, but you know better than anyone that ignorance is more risk than bliss,” mother said, laughing without much enthusiasm. Worry had edged into her tone again. Laila’s feet were shifting tighter against the carpet now; her parents would never fearful, never worried… What was worrying them so badly?

There is a pause. Her father has no doubt lost himself in thought, or was shaking his head. There is a creak from her father’s desk, followed by the soft padding of her mother’s feet joining her fathers. She wraps her arms around him, kissing his shoulder. “Damian… Let’s just worry about this another night. We’re wonderful parents, Laila is safe and happy… We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, okay?”

“More like burn it,” father sighed. It made mother laugh, something light and muffled by the fabric of father’s shirt.

“Stop  _worrying_. We’ll be okay. Laila is a smart girl, but she’s still young,” mother said easily, still carrying the hum of a smile in her tone.

“We’ll be okay,” he repeated. There was a tilt in father’s voice, and Laila could easily pair it to the smug smirk he always wore. “Besides, she’s much too short to reach the hands on the clock anyway.”

“I wonder where she gets  _that_ from,” mother laughed. Father began to argue playfully under the sound, something about how short he was he was her age, but it was lost to mother’s giggling and Laila’s thoughts.

_What was significant about the grandfather clock?_

_

Ever since the night in which Laila had overheard her parents, Laila had made it her mission to get inside her father’s office to discover the secrets of the grandfather clock. It was old and broken as far as Laila knew. The part that recieved the majority of her thoughts were the hands. According to her father, she would need to be tall enough to reach them. This wasn’t a problem, as his desk chair was just a few feet away. Well, maybe it was a problem… As she wasn’t allowed inside father’s office without his permission.

But she was a Wayne and a L/N. She could find a way around this problem.

Her first option was to get a key. She knew that there were three people who possessed a key to father’s office; father, grandfather, and Uncle Jon. Laila had gotten this information by complimenting father’s very pretty key, and he even taught her how to unlock and lock doors with it. Though she wasn’t surprised to know that grandfather had a key—they lived in the Manor with him and Laila’s grandma, Selina, and this was his house before it was theirs—she was surprised to hear that Uncle Jon had one.

Uncle Jon was father’s best friend, and it had been that way since they were kids. Though he was technically Laila’s godfather, he had been deemed Uncle the moment Laila knew what the word meant, and was publicly known to tie with Uncle Tim when it came to favorites. (Father disliked that Laila loved Tim so much, and she wasn’t oblivious to the smug smile Tim threw father when Laila hugged him in greeting). There was always something odd about Uncle Jon whenever he came around, though. Laila wondered briefly if this strange aura was why he carried a key to father’s office, but set the thought aside.

Though Jon would have been easiest to pickpocket (Aunt Stephanie said it was a “valuable skill”, which Aunt Kate supported), Laila wouldn’t be seeing him for quite some time. Lara Kent, Laila’s cousin and Uncle Jon’s daughter, repeatedly told her during their play-dates that her father was on vacation… “off world”. There was no time to decipher Kent’s ramblings—Jon, and thus the option of stealing the key, was unavailable.

Her second option also included stealing, but not a key. Uncle Jason had once stolen her away during a party, and sat her down in front of the library with her in his lap. After a short explanation including words like  _tumblers_ ,  _locks_ , and  _kit_ , Jason had showed her how to pick the old lock on the library doors. Because of Laila’s abilities as a quick learner, they were almost able to move on to try father’s study—had it not been for Grandfather, Laila would have unlocked it, too. Just before he arrived, Jason was able to stash his lock-picking kit and give an excuse as to what they were doing wandering in the upper corridors.

Though Selina had never attempted to continue Laila’s teachings, she often made jabs about her past as a thief and just how good she was at what she did. Laila didn’t need to be a master detective to know that Selina definitely carried a lock-picking kit, but she was well on her way to becoming one.

So she could either ask Jason or Selina to borrow it, venture down and unlock it at a time when her father was absent, and investigate. Selina was quickly eliminated. Laila couldn’t steal it off her without Selina discovering her, and she wouldn’t give Laila it regardless, as she was smarter than that. Laila made the mistake of assuming the opposite of Uncle Jason.

“And… why do you want to borrow it?” Jason asked. He was in the garage, and had been in there for the last couple of days, due to the scruff around his chin and the amount of grease on him.

Laila tried to look as innocent as possible, smiling up at him serenely and trying to keep her body language open, “Lara’s mom taught  _her_ how, and she keeps on bragging about how she can do it and I can, saying I’m supposed to be the smart one and stuff. I want to prove her wrong.”

Jason looked at her for a long moment. It was too long to be a normal pause, and just long enough to make Laila start to squirm. He knew she was lying. Of course he knew! She was a fool for thinking otherwise. Even if Laila imagined she was a good liar, everyone in her family was trained to be lie-detectors, her father, grandfather, and Jason most of all. (She knew this was because her grandfather and Jason lied all the time, but didn’t want to think so ill of her father and ignored it). She should have never underestimated him.

He sighed, but gave her a grin, “You’re real cute, you know that, little girl?”

“Yes, sir,” Laila said, rocking on her heels.

Jason laughed. “You’re not that bad of a liar, too. But get your hands out from behind your back. It’s one of your tells.”

“Yes, sir,” Laila said again, pulling her hands out from behind her back. She crossed them, and Uncle Jason eyed the gesture with the look he usually gave Laila’s father.

“Now, why do you  _really_ want to use it?” Jason asked. He got up from the floor, where he had been leaning against his bike, and strode over to the in-garage fridge and got himself a water. He opened it and took a swig as she explained.

Laila knew that she couldn’t risk lying a second time. Now that Jason was suspicious, she’d get caught immediately. With a slouch in her shoulders, she told the floor, “I’m trying to break into my father’s office to investigate something.”

“I figured you’d say that,” Jason replied, tilting his head and smiling a little bit, “On any other day I’d give it to you, but I really can’t this time, bud. I’m not gonna tell your dad what you’re up to, but I want you to know that you’re gonna find out what you want to know eventually. It’s better to wait.”

“Okay. Well, thank you, Uncle Jay,” Laila said.

Before she could leave, Jason wiped his hands on a rag, tossed it aside, then proceeded to mess up her hair to his greatest ability. She squealed and tried to fight him off, but it was gone as fast as it came. There was no way to get any physical revenge, as he was already covered in grease and much too big for her to attack, so she opted for something that would strike at least a playful nerve.

She beamed at him sarcastically, “You sound like Bruce, by the way.”

He lurched for the back of her shirt, scowling over his grin, but she was too fast and too small and managed to escape the room. In her wake, Jason hollered back a laughter-filled, “ _Ugh!_ ”

Tim entered the garage just as Jason made the noise, and raised an enquiring eyebrow, a W.E. tablet in one hand and his phone in the other. Though he didn’t visit the Manor as often now that he lived in the inner city, his car always seemed to be in the driveway.

“Are you okay, man?”

“Just Lee,” Jason said. He shook his head, unscrewing his water bottle, “That little girl is too damn smart for her own good.”

By the time she’d made it into the kitchen, Laila realized that she only had three or four plans left, and all of them were bad. The one that seemed redeemable was still risky, and even if Jason had promised his secrecy, going up to her father and asking him wouldn’t end well. She would be reprimanded for eavesdropping on them, and shame with the idea was already brewing in her mind.

While she was considering it, she discovered one of her play foam swords residing in the umbrella stand in the entrance to the main foyer. Thoughts of her mission evaporated. Maybe father wanted to play swords with her again? Last time, he’d jumped up on the dining room table in his suit and fenced with her, and when she won, gave a wondrous performance of a hero’s death. He played dead so well that Laila almost burst into tears.  _Had she hit him too hard? Had he hit his head when he fell off the couch?_ She only found out when he scooped her up and began to soothe her. The rowdiness of the memory made Laila remember how tired she was, and how badly she suddenly wanted to take a nap.

She turned around the corner, found the nearest person, raised her hands through her drooping eyelids and said simply, “Up.”

Laila didn’t remember being put down for a nap, with nothing but the fading scent of her mother’s perfume still in her nose.

_

“Father?”

Damian rose his head above his work. The voice buzzes something within him, something instinctive and protective, and he almost imagines a little girl shyly peering at him from around the doorway. But she’s no longer a little girl anymore.

Laila Wayne stared at him, and he was reminded again and again of your eyes as he looked upon his daughter. Though they carried his hue, they had your shape. It was the one thing about Laila physically that connected her to Damian. She had her mother’s build, her nose, her everything. Bruce was introduced through the smile. And though Laila didn’t know it, her cheeks and her chin shared the same sharpness that Damian’s own mothered carried.

The truth was that Damian found himself more in her personality than in her hands or her chin or her eyes. She walked taller and prouder than she actually was, smirking and narrowing her eyes with the same slyness that her mother had now fallen in love with twice: first in Damian, and then their child. She moved with the graceful and silent fluidity of a pianist playing a quieted piano.

But maybe saying that Laila and Damian had nothing in common physically was untrue. The scars inlaid in her palms from holding the same weapons, grappling with the same tools, and punching the same faces were identical. They both bore marks as Robin. Tonight, in particular, they both carried the ghostly hollowness in their eyes that came with the after-effects of a fear-gas dose.

He had wanted, more than anything, to keep her away from this life. But like him, she was too persistent and too stubborn. She had gone behind his back. She gave him no room to say no, and fit herself under the mantle with the same forceful grip that he had loosened in his late teens. But she was kinder, softer, more willing to empathize and be merciful than he still was.

That’s what had gotten her three nights ago. The Scarecrow had appeared through Gotham’s mist with the intent to make a grand return, to show Gotham real fear. Robin had never fought him before. She thought she saw weakness, and instead of bearing a fist, she extended her hand. Damian had to bring her out of a panic attack for the first time in his life. He and Y/N had to watch at her bedside for the last two days as she faught. She hadn’t spoke of what visions she saw, but the look of horror that she gave him when she awoke confirmed  _his_ worst fears. Though she insisted that she was now okay to wander the Manor, he knew she should have been asleep hours ago.

“Beloved,” Damian breathed. Gently, he gestured her inside. She was quick to enter, giving the dark hallway a shaken look once she closed the doors. “How are you feeling?”

“I… I don’t know, father,” she told him. Laila skirted around his desk, and gently lifted herself onto its surface so that they could speak face-to-face. “I’m having trouble falling asleep. Are you alright?”

Damian had also been dosed. Though the images of his lover and child being taking from him were still fresh, he had much more practice at avoiding the visions that Laila did. She looked him over with twice as much worry as he was showing on his face, and he was reminded again of her hand extending to those Damian thought never deserved any kindness for what they had done. This was not the first time she had done it, either. She offered muggers redemption, gave second chances to criminals, tried to offer her help to the insane. Even if they were too sick to accept or understand, she still tried. She loved, and loved, and loved, and Damian wondered if it was his fault that she was so willing to give.

And then he though,  _no, it couldn’t be me_. Because who loved more than you did? This was the part of Laila’s personality that was  _you_. Damian loved. He did, he really did, but no one was capable of giving their all to their cause quite like you, and now the same could be said of your daughter.

“Did I ever tell you about when you were a baby, how you used to have trouble breathing?” Damian’s said softly. Laila shook her head. At this, he took her fist and kissed her palm, squeezing it and not failing to be surprised by how small it no longer was.

“The doctors said that you would be fine, and that it happened with babies sometimes as they adjusted,” Damian said. He stared out the window as he spoke, still studying the weight of her palm in his hand. While he could encompass the whole of her fist in his own, he could now barely bend his fingers over her fingertips. There was a childish nostalgia in it, and he yearned to feel her soft, impossibly tiny hands wrap around his thumb again.

“Your mother was so worried that she moved your crib into our room, and we took turns laying on that side of the bed so we could hear your heartbeat under our hands.” Damian said. He breathed in, hating how the breath was almost shaky.

Laila was smiling now, and Damian immediately wished that he could somehow give her a piece of the love he carried for her, just so she could know how concerned he was, just so she could know that he never wanted her in the line of fire again.

“When it cleared up, you got moved back across the hall,” he explained, “Still, I was worried that it would have gotten worse in the night, and so after patrols I would rush up to your room. Sometimes I was still in costume, but that never mattered. You’d always know it was me, regardless if I was Batman or not.”

Laila sat on his words for a moment, then inclined her head and pulled her hand from his grip, crossing her legs, “What were you like when you were a baby, father?”

“I don’t exactly know,” Damian said. He cast a look to one of his desk drawers, then threw himself into it, in search of something, “You’ve never met your grandmother, but she was… a lot like I am with you.”

“Really?” Laila asked.

Damian nodded. From the drawer he produced a pale, aging envelope, the seal of two swords crossing over a desert flower broken. He opened it to reveal a photo, and gave it to her as he spoke. “She used to tell me I was the future, and that I was destined to do great things. Though her plans for me may have been wrong, she was still my mother… She still loved me deeply, and only now do I understand just how deep that love was.”

Within the photo was a woman against a pale white wall, holding a child. Her head was bowed to view the baby boy, their faces obscured by her great curtain of sleek, caramel hair that seemed to go on for ages. There was a series of art upon her wrists and fingers, and she looked at her father’s hands to find the same, faded markings. She turned the photo over to find,  _Happy Father’s Day, Bruce - Talia._

“And what about mom?” Laila asked, returning the photo.

Damian put it back in it’s rightful place, and cocked an eyebrow at her, “What do you mean?”

“You always talk about how much you love me, but you never mention how you met or fell in love with mom.” Laila prompted.

Damian stood from his chair, and Laila followed him out of his study. She stood closer than usual with the odd rotation of their shadows against the walls, and so he placed his hand upon her upper back and pulled her into his side once they made their way down the corridor.

“She was a beautiful, beautiful fool, and I became enchanted by her the moment we met…”

Damian lost himself in the memories. You met at the Academy, and shared the nature of the outcasts. Though Damian was an outcast because he was snobby and rude, you were one simply because everyone thought you were weird. You preferred to be alone on sunny days and always had a dazed look upon your face, off in your own fantasy world, and campaigning for student rights and anti-bullying. While he had found you odd due to reputation, the few conversations you had in passing had intrigued him.

He didn’t know what it was. He still doesn’t, but there had been a soft pull in his chest ever since your first conversation. Then you were dating, going to dances together, finding out the secrets of the school, starting a club that no one but you two alone would join. Damian still had the stupid badges you made. He remembered wearing them everyday in high school, and loving every moment of it. Then someone was picking on him one day, and you appeared from the smoke like a vengeful spirit and stood up for him. He was in love.

“You say that it was so dangerous… because of your mother, because of Robin… “ Laila said, opening the door to her room. She pulled back the covers of her bed, sliding inside the moment Damian turned on her fan, “Why did you have me, then? Why get married?”

Damian, for once, couldn’t find a straight answer for this question. Why  _had_ he? He settled down on Laila mattress until it dipped, adjusting the blankets around her until she was half being suffocated by the fluff and half protected. She squirmed and laughed when he buried within it, and he found his answer.

“My beloved,” Damian said simply. “We… wanted to be together. There was a mission that made us question some things about ourselves, and we decided that we wanted to become a family.

“And as I have learned,” Damian said softly, brushing back his daughters hair as she got comfortable.

He thought of all Bruce had done to get him back, each sacrifice he’d made in the name of his parents. Everything his mother had done, everything his mother had wanted, just so they could be side-by-side again. Each risk and leap Dick had taken for him, when he could have easily slipped or stumbled or faltered. All  _you_ had done, all you had gifted him and all the time you’d stayed with him.

“Love makes us willing to do very, very insane things…”

BONUS:

“Okay, one last question… Why is my name Laila?”

“ _We called you Laila because that is my mother’s middle name,_ ” Damian began. Even with the new beginning, Laila still knew the story. “ _In thanks, the sky put special stars in your eyes so that you could talk to them…_ ”


	18. By The Numbers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Please,” he said, looking at you with unwavering hope which you had never seen him wear so powerfully, “I need your help.”

“ _Please_ ,” Damian said.

The words come out of his mouth in a single sharp whisper, a bullet shot into the dark, illuminating your world with sparks that die in your chest as you realize exactly what he’s asking. He’s down on his knees, for one thing. His head is bowed and he’s waiting for an answer. You have all become debris of the remains of Titan’s Tower, and your teammates are going through the rubble not far off. Maybe he’s trying to be funny, trying to make the situation better, but Damian Wayne has never been very purposefully humorous before.

You took in a breath, the corner of your mouth still trying to determine if this was something you were supposed to laugh at. Every part of you seems to be fighting itself. Laugh or frown, quiet or speak, celebrate or mourn. Your home had just been taken from you. Damian is now making jokes, possibly to make you feel better. Because this  _has_ to be a joke.

“Let me get this straight,” you said, casting a look at your teammates. None of them are looking at you. “Our tower has just been taken from us. You’ve tried the League for another base of operations, where the rest of the team will be staying, but you want me to stay with you at the Manor…  _so I can pretend to be your significant other?_ ”

Repeating it to yourself made it all the more real. You had gained the ability to look at Damian without becoming a blush-ridden mess, not to mention you could control your reactions to his touch. The crush you had on him was being reined in harder by the day. Soon, you could be in the same room with him and not show any outward romantic attraction to him. Though you hoped the same could be said for your emotional state, there was no way…

Researching wasn’t one of your talents, but you had done so in the last weeks with much more investment than you would put into a school project. Scientifically, a crush lasts around four months. That was seventeen weeks of thinking about Damian, one-twenty-one days of blushing when he walked into the room, and two-thousand-nine-hundred-and-twenty-one hours of hoping he shared some form of what you felt for him at all. That was  _one hundred seventy-five thousand, three-hundred-sixteen_  minutes of your life that you had liked Damian Wayne. But, the truth is, you had gone through those months. In fact, you’d gone through a  _lot_ of months. You’d gone through two years worth of months—you’d had this crush on him six times over. According to your research, that now put you into the “in love” stage.

“I lied to my father, Y/N. I told him that I had found someone just to get him to stop pestering me,” Damian explained, pushing himself off of a piece of your kitchen wall, “At the news, everyone was so pleased and excited to meet this person that I knew I couldn’t disappoint. You don’t… have to, if that would make you… uncomfortable, but I am truly desperate and you have always been very important… To my family, I mean.”

“Please,” he said, looking at you with unwavering hope which you had never seen him wear so powerfully, “I need your help.”

With his eyes, with the mask off, that thought comes again. You’re in love with Damian Wayne.

You’ve  _been_ in love with Damian Wayne, for two years now. There are so many numbers involved that it makes you sick, enough variables and questions to make you dizzy. And even after all this time, no matter how hard you try to look away and deny his requests, you’re still here. It’s what you do. You give. Coffee when he tires, food when he forgets, comfort when he doubts. So, there’s no way you can’t now.

“Of course I’ll help you, Damian,” you said.

He goes off to brief the team on the new quarters. As he goes, he brushes your shoulder with his hand but misses just barely enough for his thumb to stroke your jaw. When he whispers  _thank you_ , his shoulders relax.

You hate the sincerity in your voice, “Anytime.”

The moment he leaves, you feel a familiar heat crawl up your neck and leech upon the place where he touched you. It’s a blush that you should be well-versed in pressing down, an urge you had been an expert at holding back for so long, but it’s too late now. He has you again. You unsure if this is a good or a bad thing anymore, and it terrifies you.

**____**

“Don’t do any of it if you don’t feel like it,” Damian pressed for the millionth time.

The winter makes Damian’s icy retorts look like affectionate cooing. She has painted nature with a layer of glass, frosting windows with frozen lace and your breath into fog, all of it glinting underneath the sun like layered sugar. Regardless of her beauty, she is deadly; the dead trees reach skyward for light, icicles shining with the same flicker of sunshine that knives do. She reminds you of Damian.

He is in his element, but regardless of the weather that always seems to be the case. He traverses the snow like he was carved from it, walking with the grace of fallen snowflakes, but still somehow treading with a gait like an oncoming blizzard. His eyes are more blue than green, a frozen lake cracking beneath your feet in a glaze of trepidation. He is the master of this domain. Winter’s icy eyes turn to him in search of warmth. Only you have found it first.

“I’m sorry if I make you uncomfortable,” you whispered.

You have agreed that touching will be necessary to your lie. Cassandra Cain spoke body language before any other, and Bruce shows affection through touch exclusively. He tells you that they’re excited enough to be up waiting for your arrival, and he certainly wasn’t exaggerating: curious heads peer out of the corners of seemingly every window of the house.

“Never,” Damian promised. He looks away from you when he says it.

People are already scrambling for the door, and a series of yelling and booming barks meet your ears once you reach the top stair. Damian took your hand. It was sly and easy like he had done it a thousand times, but the warmth of his hand is blissfully new life and calm washes over you like his warmth does. You looked at one another like you were about to kiss. Then the moment is gone, even if your hands are still intertwined and you’re being greeted by his family.

“No  _way_ ,” Tim says. The smile you get from him reminds you of the days where he lead the Titans. “Y/N,  _you’re_ the person Damian’s been talking about? I don’t believe this…”

“Believe it.” Damian cuts in, curt and tight as usual. He turns back to you.

The transition is sharp enough to give you whiplash. He had to have practiced, had to have felt this way before, because the love in his eyes is suddenly suffocatingly sweet and his tone is nothing but simple adoration. Damian pulls your palm to his lips and lays a kiss there. “Beloved, why don’t you go store your bag in my room? I’ll move our car.”

You don’t have much time to register everything you are feeling. Your skin is steaming beneath his fingertips, his grip is light and gentle, and your mind has become a muddy soup which you can barely navigate. The moment you gather yourself is when you sink into his touch.

“Sure thing, Damian,” you smiled. The one clear thought you have before this mess begins is:  _god, I’m not going to make it to tomorrow._

**____**

You have become very good at counting months, hours, and minutes. Damian had brought you into his charade four months ago. You’ve had a crush on him seven times over now. That’s also thirty-four weeks of entwining fingers, two-hundred-and-forty-three days of embracing longer than necessary, and five-thousand-eight-hundred-and-forty-three hours of lying and telling the world that you are dating Damian Wayne. The thing is, you don’t know if it’s a lie anymore.

Your stays at the Manor become more and more frequent, even if Titan’s Tower is nearly restored. Damian had planned for you to keep up the act for whenever it was truly needed, then act like he mostly wanted to keep your relationship away from family. It would be a way of backing out. But after the dinner you had, after Bruce pulled Damian aside and told him how proud of him he was, there  _was_ no way to back out.

Over the period in which your fake relationship had instilled, you’d agreed upon a couple rules. If there was a person in which you wanted to reveal the truth to, you needed to decide upon it together. That meant that Jon Kent was the only one who knew. (Or, sort of, anyway. When you told him that you weren’t actually together, he only laughed and nodded, “Oh, sure.”) You would tap each other in some way if you were uncomfortable with what was happening. (This only occurred once, when Jason tried to rope you into talking about your sex-life. You stood there tapping each other’s backs rapidly for the next twenty minutes). Then, the most important rule: no kissing.

Mouth-kissing, anyway. Damian seemed to think that kissing was the only form of affection that one could express. When it seemed that someone was suspicious of how little lovey-dovey you were being, he would kiss the nearest part of you in which he could reach. Your shoulders, cheeks, nose-bridge, nose, eyelids, forehead, chin, jaw, knuckles, palm, and even down your arms once. You had restricted yourself to kissing his face alone, but every time you kissed him at all he blew up like a scarlet balloon (he was a very good actor, so much so that you swore it was real sometimes). Everywhere but your lips and neck were okay. That was the rule.

But you’re both rule breakers. It’s a Teen Titans thing.

After playing video games in Damian’s room for a couple of hours, he decided to venture off downstairs to get some food. Seeing as it was now given that you follow each other everywhere, you clasped hands at the top of the stairs and descended them with the intention of gorging on junk food.

“I don’t really believe that Damian could ever find someone, to be honest with you,” Dick said softly.

Damian stopped so abruptly that you almost ran straight into the line of the open doorway to the parlor, alerting them that you were in the hall. He pulled you back by your entwined hands. You didn’t fail to notice how he put you behind him like there was danger ahead that he was guarding you against. Together, you crouched against the banister of the smaller stairwell and began to listen in.

“What? Like, you think they’re faking?” Stephanie asked.

“No, no… I mean, I’m really happy for them, but I always imagined that Damian was more of a lone-wolf.” Dick said, more to himself than to the others in the room. He chuckled, “Or maybe that’s just me not wanting him to grow up.”

“You and me both,” agreed Bruce.

“Well, they’ve never kissed before,” Stephanie said, sound a little grossed-out by the thought, “And, like, I’ve met Y/N’s previous significant others. They’ve told me that they prefer to kiss to show affection with them—it was for Truth or Dare—and so I’m a little surprised they haven’t yet. Maybe it’s just a Damian thing?”

“I’m with Steph on this one,” said Tim, equally disgusted, “I bet they’re faking. He’s okay with every other kind of affection in the book, with how gross they are around each other, so why wouldn’t he be okay with  _actual_ stuff?”

“But we’ve seen them kiss before. Remember the library incident?” Dick proposed.

You cast Damian a look. They were referring to the time where you were discussing if you thought anyone had found out yet, but then Dick walked in to get you both for a mission. As you had to practice getting caught much too often, you quickly pushed him over between the shelves and straddled him. Despite your attempts to block out the memory out of embarrassment, you had at least succeeded in looking like you had been making out for the last ten minutes. Your hair and clothes were both wild and messy, and Damian had been blushing too hard for it to be fake. Ever since Dick had regarded it as indisputable proof that you and Damian were together.

“We saw them  _almost_ kiss,” said Stephanie.

“They could have been faking it,” Tim said, more determined now. “Now that I think about it, there’s a bunch of other pieces of evidence to support this. I bet if we go up to his room right now, they’ll be sitting five feet apart on their phones and doing the most platonic thing we can think of. Hate to say it, B, but Damian probably just put this together to get you to stop bothering him about it. And Y/N’s… well, y’know. Of course they would help him.”

Bruce hummed, thinking.

With the realization that your secret was falling apart at your feet, desperate times had been called upon. You moved together, like you had been doing this for years (which it felt like you had been), so fast and so smoothly that there was no need for talking at all. Damian’s hands came to hook underneath your thighs. You jumped with the motion, fastening your legs around his slender hips and your arms around his neck. Heart hammering by the mile, butterflies singing in wild chorus, you locked your bodies intimately close and began making out like your life depended on it.

Damian didn’t relent. He shoved you both into the wall hard enough to make the paintings shudder, and suddenly you knew everything about him. With your fingers tugging on his hair and his plump lips slanted against yours, you  _knew_ Damian, deeply, intimately, and there was no way of denying it. You knew what his voice sounded like during late-night talks. You knew what his eyes looked like when full of adoration, what they looked like when clutched by fear. You knew what his kiss was like now, too: it was heaven. A very, very desperate heaven. Then he began to preach.

“I love you,” he said, just loud enough for the others to hear. They arrived, all freezing solid with Damian’s words and watching the scene, definitely feeling like they’d walked in on something.

Even you were moved by the conviction in his voice, almost to the point where you were unsure if he was lying at all. His tone didn’t convince, it  _demanded_ that you know, wove the understanding so deep within you that it was impossible to misinterpret. You lost yourself in his kiss as he dove for it again, just long enough to retain a blissful ignorance. His kissing slowed down, and he spoke between each one as if he was whispering to the stars themselves.

“More than anyone, anything,” he whispered. His nose trailed lightly up your jaw, tilting your head back and making room for his artful magic. There was a sourness in his expression that the others couldn’t see, something that didn’t like revealing these things, something that didn’t want to open up that box. You taped him once, inquiring, but he never tapped back. He only turned his head just in view of the others, smiling mischievously into your cheek. “My most beautiful, what have you  _done_ to me?”

“I’ve brainwashed you into falling in love with me,” you snickered in jest, hoping that it sounded just as real and affectionate as Damian’s confession did. “I’m actually an old hag in disguise and I’m after your money, rich boy.”

Damian’s lip quirked, and an actual smile made itself clear as he neared your faces, “Take whatever you want from me. I already have everything I want, my love…” He glanced down at your mouth, watching you flush with a devious smirk, “ _right here_.”

“Nevermind,” Tim said, upper lip curling. You jumped apart, and you were proud of the surprised yelp you gave. He shook his head when Stephanie began to cackle, “I think they’re good.”

Damian set you down. The shyness you now displayed was no act; you shrunk back into his shirt, blushing like a mad-man and trying not to keel in on yourself. Maybe it would be best if you just faded out of existence.  _Right here_.

Damian’s smirk evaporated just as sharply as it all came. He growled and started fixing his hair, half-hiding you behind him. “What do you  _want,_ Drake? I am clearly in the middle of something.”

(“That was pretty good. Where’d you get all that from?” You asked him later, wiping off your face to calm down.)

(“I just came up with it,” Damian dismissed, eagerly turning away from you. You didn’t miss the redness crawling up his neck.)

**____**

“Can we just… watch a movie and lie down together?”

Damian raised an eyebrow. He tried to be playful, tried to be the Robin everyone wanted him to be. You needed it more than anyone right now. Encountering villains who had killed or scarred teammates always meant for more taxing Titans missions, especially for the two co-leaders of the group. He felt the guilt and hatred stirring in his chest even now at the thought of what he had just gone through, what  _you_ had just gone through, but it was now boiling underneath something else.

He had reclined on his bed, staring up at you as you paced the length of his room, rubbing your eyes and sighing. Your efforts to work out of the mission’s funk was wearing away at you faster than the actual mission was. Damian longed to do something about it, but he didn’t… he didn’t know how. He knew what he would have done in front of the others; gathered you up in his arms, cooed until you mimed brushing aside your worries in favor of being with him. But this was real, so the comfort needed to be equally felt.

“I mean… not like,  _together_ , but… could we just watch a movie, please?” You asked him.

Damian powered on his flatscreen. It was silly, really. You flit around saying it, you both dance around labels and admitting the truth, even if it was right in front of you. Even if you couldn’t ask him to lie with you without going rosy, Damian could turn his head at this very moment and find you changing into your pajamas. He had never imagined himself to be a man of words or action when it came to affection, and that remained the same regardless of how many words you made him want to speak.

It was late. You were often lucky to get home by midnight, nevermind while the sun was still up. He knew that even if you were both exhausted, there was no way you could sleep right now. That could at least be said for him, anyway. He couldn’t sleep after missions, and maybe it was the stress or the nightmares, but he knew that he would be up until morning. You’d probably force him into a nap if he showed a single sign of exhaustion. The thought, for some ridiculous reason, made him feel lighter.

Touch had become instinctual. For months now, Damian had adjusted to the sensation of your arms wrapping around him from behind, or your hair between his fingers when at a family gathering. You throw back the covers and slide in. Damian reaches over you from the remote, making sure to press as much of his weight on you as he can when reaching for it. You squealed and shoved him off, beaming, only for him to move so he was practically lying on top of you. The only thing keeping you apart was his elbows, propping him up on either side of your face.

“I’m gonna kill you,” you said, grabbing for the remote.

Damian placed it out of your reach, pining your wrists beside your head. He snickered, “Be careful what you threaten me with,  _beloved_ ,” he mocked, “I know where you are ticklish.”

“That doesn’t scare me.” You smirked.

“It should,” Damian said, then frantically began to tickle your sides. You jerked and tried to worm out of his grip, shaking with laughter, and Damian persisted until you were heaving for breath in between laughs. He could feel your chest rising and falling against his. Deciding that you had won your freedom, he rolled off of you and began flicking through Netflix in order to find a decent movie to watch.

You were still smiling when you made your decision. You were still smiling when the movie began, and when you turned off the lamp. He felt your smile in the darkness, and even if he was trying to distract himself with the movie, even if he had felt it a million times over now, he knew your touch better than he knew any other. You curled yourself around his bicep and sunk into the story.

Damian made no move to shrug you off. It satisfied him, how he managed to calm you. There wasn’t any tapping. There was no one to hide from, no one to shield against your secret. It was just you. Messy, nervous and fluttery you, who had always been there for him, who always sought out his worries before your own. That feeling swelled inside his chest so suddenly and so quickly that if he didn’t release it he would explode.

He waited for the movie to grow less interesting, waited for your eyes to fall shut before he shut it off. He turned to you in the darkness, stared at you, and sunk into awe. No one human being alive had cared for him this way. There had been Richard, there had been father, but never before had anyone but you deemed him worthy of something so pure. He could feel the weight of your heart in his hands at this very moment, solid gold and bleeding with warmth. You let him and knew what he could do with it. But you were still here. After all this time, you were still here.

Damian’s hand felt uncomfortable grasping the blankets in the way it was. The only way he could move it was around you. You were asleep… he would be fine! If you awoke the next morning wrapped up in one another, he could dismiss it, he could say that it happened in your sleep. Which wasn’t a lie—you  _were_ asleep. He just needed to say… just needed to get it off of his chest…

He took in a slow breath, then brushed the hair out of your face as to view you better. “Y/N… I know you may be asleep, but I want you to know…” Damian let his arm wrap around you, and felt an odd sense of peace wash over him when you nuzzled back, “… I wish that this was all real. I think I’m falling in love with you…”

Damian waited for a response, waited for you to rush out of the bed and away from him, but no response came. You only remained asleep in his arms. He could only hope that you could do this again another day, awake, and he could hear you whisper those words back to him.

**BONUS:**

Once Damian’s breathing evened out against your ear, you turned your head to peer up at him, smiling hard enough to split your face in two.

“I love you too, Damian Wayne. Even if you’re a prideful son of a bitch.”


	19. "Here"

“Damian, are you drunk? There was  _alcohol_ in the  _punch—crap, crap, crap,_ Bruce is coming— _hide. Now_.”

“Of  _course_ I knew,” Damian huffs, flicking his wrist behind him dismissively. It looked more like a disoriented bird swinging his wing. “I’m Damian  _Wayne_. I know—I know  _everything_.”

“Do you know how to be  _quiet?_ ” 

“Obviously,” Damian said, loudly.

You slapped your hand over his mouth as quietly as you could, shoving you both out the kitchen’s service doorway and into the ornate alley between the garden path and the Manor. The house was big enough to be it’s own little city—not like your “luck” would let that stop Bruce from finding you two regardless. It wouldn’t be all that bad if he found you, but you knew he wouldn’t like the idea of a nineteen-year-old Damian getting drunk.

As swiftly and as stealthily as you could, you grabbed Damian’s sleeve and pulled him under the arbor. His feet— _bare_ , for who knows  _what_ reason—slapping against the loose stone path made you jump. Bruce had  _surely_ heard that, and would  _surely_ investigate loud footsteps heading into his garden. A detective without a case was  _always_ nosy.

You veered into the unkempt tree line, hoping the close-cropped forest could hide you as well as it hid the Manor. Letting Bruce or Alfred know of Damian’s condition was bound to be troublesome. But you were sheltering Damian less from them, and more from the party; he didn’t like it in the first place, and you’d prefer to save him from any embarrassments. It was your responsibility.

“You’re so small,” he chuckled, merrily letting you drag him off. He muttered something else, something in Arabic that you didn’t catch, but the way he was staring at you was more alarming than words you didn’t know.

“Not small. You’re just  _big_ ,” you said. Damian had grown like a weed sophomore year, and was now even taller than Bruce; Jon remained the only one who could top him, and remained the only one to never stop reminding Damian of it too. It was like lugging a tree-creature along.

He chuckled. You caught the murmur this time. “Hnh. [ _Little mouse._ ]”

With your concentration drawn on the word, you failed to notice a spare root blocking your path. Soon you were sprawled on the ground, hands sprayed with dirt and cheeks splashed with frustration; of course, not only had you fallen and made a cacophony of noise, but your jeans had ripped and blood had shown through.  _Ugh_.

“Small and clumsy,” Damian muttered. 

He crouched down and offered his arm, watching with wide green eyes—owl’s eyes—for you to take it. They weren’t anxious like an owl’s, though. There was a sharpness to them, a watchful patience, a hawk observing an opportunity. But if you knew anything for certain, it was that no animal carried that shade of green like he did. You took his arm.

When your feet were flat on the ground, his gaze darted down to the scrape on your leg. To your face. To your hands, where they connected to his forearm, ruddy and stinging. His gaze lingered there. Then he returned to your eyes, stared into them like he had discovered some great truth, narrowing his face in preparation to speak.

“Kiss me,” Damian blurted.

Some great truth that was.

“Later,” you told him. His face pinched tighter, nose scrunched and brows knitted, almost in disappointment. “That’s just the drinks talking, anyway. I have to get you back to your room before Bruce realizes all of this, because then I’ll get in trouble, and  _you’ll_ get in trouble.”

“Not the  _drinks._ No.” Damian said.

“Yeah,” you agreed, hoping that would be enough to keep him quiet.

Damian caught your hand. The back door was open, the one that leads into the garden, someplace far off. The chatter broke apart the swaying whispers of nature by a fraction, but Damian didn’t seem to care; he paused to stare out over the garden, then tugged on your sleeve in a pleading sort of way. “Stay.”

“I am,” you assured. Then, tried to pull him along again.

Damian remained soldier-still and looked at the garden as it appeared through the trees, “No.  _Here_.”

“I have to get you to bed. You should go to sleep,” you pleaded. No one would think twice about Damian hiding away in his room, especially because of a party held throughout the rest of the house. It made you frown.

“Don’t need to,” Damian said. He tugged on your hand for emphasis, like pointing into the ground and going,  _here_. “I sleep plenty.”

You scoffed a laugh. Regardless, Damian seemed pleased albeit stubborn.

“Here,” he repeated.

“Alright.” Maybe you could coerce him up there in a minute. He seemed serene and calm, a layer of intention in his eyes. Whatever this was, he had a reason for it. “Why?”

Damian brought your hands into his chest, where he wordlessly rubbed circles into the spots on your palm you landed on. He did it while looking at a spot somewhere between the trees. He did it like he did everything for you; without an acknowledgment, without expecting a  _thank you_ or making the expected  _you’re welcome._ He did it like he wasn’t even doing it at all. Like he didn’t want either of you to know that he cared.

“Titus and Ace. I take them here.” Damian paused for a very long time. “They like it.”

He was staring at your hands in the dim light the house gave, staring at them like he did to you earlier, like it was a lone task in which he had to accomplish. Like he was waiting for something—from himself or you, no one knew—that he wasn’t frightened by, but knew was coming. A realization. An acceptance. An acknowledgment.

When he spoke next it was a whisper, small and precise. “I imagined you would too.”

You didn’t look at the setting. It was just a gnarled little clearing between the trees, spaces between branches just big enough for the golden lights of the house to peer through. You didn’t need to look to know that. You didn’t need to look to see that garden through the trees. If Damian liked it, hoped you liked it,

“I do.”

Then you loved it.

For just a while longer, you stood. Damian smoothed the sting in your palms away. He barely moved, still as a statue, one thumb mechanically soothing and the other cradling. Soon, you found yourself leaning into him.

“I’m not that drunk.” He said. 

“I know.” You nodded, truthfully.

“I don’t like the party, either.” He said.

“I know.” You nodded.

“I like my room more.” He said. His eyes, hawk’s eyes, flickered down to yours. “And you.”

“I know,” you nodded, a slow smile conquering your face. “And me.”


	20. Happy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It wasn’t an argument,” he murmured, tone barely sour and tired. His eyes had been lost somewhere over your shoulder. “He asked if I still wanted to become Batman.”

“For someone with the moniker of  _Cat_ girl, you have a surprising amount of dogs.”

The morning and its inhabitants are messy. Damian has day-old gel spiking his hair like overgrown grass, you are layered in dog hair, and the night had brought forth a storm of dirtying proportions. Unbothered and wrapped around your feet, three large hounds lay snoring.

“Funny you mention that now,” you sighed. Stretching with dogs on your legs was something akin to an Olympic sport, and one you weren’t good at; Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday all popped up and began yipping at Damian. Regardless of how good he was with animals, nothing would please your three  _very_ protective friends. “I’ve known em’ for three-four years now. And we’ve been doing  _this_ since high school.”

 _This_ referred to, mainly, Damian’s times spent occupying the opposite end of your queen-size. It had started when he began (legally) driving, when being around family got too annoying and Jon was too far away. He’d broken in. He had  _always_ broken in, to the point where you just left that window unlocked so he could slip through after patrol. Sometimes you’d shove in together. Sometimes you’d wake up and he’d just be there. But regardless of when and how, Damian came because when it felt like there was no place to go, he had here. (Or maybe he just liked your dogs).

“ _Known_ ,” Damian quotes. He set himself on the mattress so your thighs could press against his back, glacier against furnace. “You say you’ve “known” them, and never that you “got” them.”

“Yeah,” you said. You inclined toward him, belly folding, and skipped around a shielding muzzle to stroke his knee. “I don’t own them. I don’t like that— _owning_  another living being. They’re my buddies, not my pets.”

Damian scoffed. He passed you a look, lip quirking in a pleased manner. “You’re  _nothing_ like a cat.”

You smiled. Then, gently poked his arm. “You’re  _too much_  like a prissy little bird.”

His tone changed, just barely, another drop of dye added to a water glass. His posture lost it’s spine, winding him taut but while bent over like a broken spring. You’d thought it had been like that last night too. He had arrived with ceremony, stripped his gear, then dropped into bed with words filling him over the edge. He’d wanted to say something but pulled back at the last moment and the memory was lost in sleep.

“Yes,” Damian said. He let out a breath through his nose, “I was.”

The world slowed to such an achingly slow pace that you could suddenly feel gravity’s weight on your shoulders. Gently, you unfolded your legs and settled them on the floor. Flattened your feet into the wood.

“Don’t tell me…”

Bruce had threatened to fire Damian before. He’d done it, too, but the thing was that he was always back by the end of the month. It had always been more of a grounding than a legitimate leave. Bruce may have been serious about it—he’d fired Stephanie and Dick “for realsies”, as quoted by both—but Damian had always been too stubborn to accept it.

 _He needs me_ , he would say,  _Batman needs a Robin. And I am the best, so why cast me aside? I’ll be back come sunset._

“We both know Bruce would never actually take you off the bench, Damian,” you said, and added with a laugh, “You’d never let him.”

The edge of his mouth flicked upward again, “True. Though I wasn’t fired.”

This seemed like the kind of conversation where Damian’s edges would pry apart just far enough to see through. You wanted to get comfortable, wanted to hunker down and let him know you were listening, but the moment your fingers skirt along his covering layer he would be gone. The solution is obvious: you had to trap him here,  _then_ start listening.

The settling of your calves onto his lap is enough to alert him, but he still pins them down and he still turns his head. Everything about him has always been so feline; the moment after you card your fingers up his spine and into his hair, he bows his chin and gives a little purr.

“It wasn’t an argument,” he murmured, tone barely sour and tired. His eyes had been lost somewhere over your shoulder. “He asked if I still wanted to become Batman.”

“And do you?”

In the dull heaviness of the grey morning, Damian closed his eyes and hid away the only green for miles. The rest of his face had fixed as if faced with a challenge. It was a face you would see on any other person given a puzzle; Damian’s problem-solving expression was calm and steady, never crushed up in frustration and confusion.

“I told him, I did.” He murmured. Then, his head rose, and there were the green eyes of a boy torn between two very important things. “Is that… bad?”

“Why would it be bad?”

Your fingers were now rooted deeply in the forest of his hair, carrying just enough force to diminish the idea of cradling. Damian loved to be held, to be taken care of, but that part of him that Ra’s had instilled had never stopped telling him that was wrong. He should never show weakness. He should never open himself to attack, to vulnerability, as much as he trusted and as much as he  _needed_.

Tired of being told what to do, Damian bent into your embrace and buried himself within it. He spoke warily, like the wrong word would cause you to push him away.

“Richard was never happy with the cowl. He pretended he was, but he was only close to it when the cape was gone. Father is the same way—it makes things worse. It ruins him.”

“I… I want to do it, my love. But I also want to be happy,” Damian said.

“Damian,” you said, “You, Bruce, and Dick are three  _very_ different people. Dick was upset because Bruce was gone at the time, and he hates letting people down. He’s always thought that he can never be as perfect as Bruce, so he thought he was letting everyone down, and that’s why he was unhappy.”

“Bruce thinks literally everything is his fault, so he lets people beat him up and be mean to him as punishment for something he couldn’t control, because he’s a control freak. He makes himself unhappy.”

Being Catgirl meant you had been around for a long time. Selina had brought you in at a very young age, during the later years of Dick’s time as Robin, and had begun training around the time Jason died. You’d only just got the costume when Damian entered the stage. But Bruce and Dick had been there from the beginning. Watching the duo waver and crumble was like learning a childhood hero had died.

“You,” you touched Damian’s heart (and felt his short huff of laughter when you did), “can be different. It was them making themselves unhappy, not the cowl. But you… Helping people makes you truly, really happy, Damian. That’s what I love about you.”

There was more you could say. There was always more to say with him. He loved, more than anyone you ever met. It was hidden under layers of expressions, secret smiles, stroked knees and light purrs. Helping people was a way of redemption for him; because he had killed, he had hurt, and he had burned, but Bruce and Dick had shown him he could fix that. Just by peeling back a layer or two to give some love.

“You love everything about me,” he said.

It was spoken thoughtfully, like the realization had never been made before, but with enough inflection where you knew better than to give a reply. The smirk on his face was probably meant to be annoying or smug. You found it endearing. (Meaning, of course, that Damian was right.)

“Father doesn’t want me to do it,” Damian said. He shrugged, “He’s never wanted this life for me. Which only means I have to get my hands on the uniform by tomorrow evening, of course.”

“Rebellion and all that,” you smirked.

By now, the hounds had all gotten impatient. Wednesday and Friday had trotted off in search of toys, leaving Thursday behind to possessively squirm her way onto your lap, pausing her Damian-watching only to receive pleased pets by your hand.

“You read my mind,” Damian raised his head from your shoulder, eyes more jade than emerald in the early morning smog. His head tilted and they caught the dull light, turning dull into sharp, and green into gold. “What am I thinking now, Miss Psychoanalysis?”

“ _Kiss me,_ pretty girl who I’m going to marry someday,” you said, sagely.

Damian’s hand fluttered up to cup one side of your face, thumb sweeping down your cheek. He huffed, arrogantly, but the softness remained in his eyes when you scratched under Thursday’s chin. “Hh. Only if we bring the dogs, too.”

“I don’t think they’d like that,” you laughed. On cue, Thursday growled.

He gave a low chuckle that was more of a breathy hum than a laugh, and tipped your heads together as leisurely and as gradually as possible. He always wanted to draw them out. He always got what he wanted, if it was you who could give it. (He wished that he could tell you just how much that feeling is reciprocated, over and over again, until you could never forget it. So he tried his best.)

Then, his fingers wound in your hair, and he pulled away just far enough to speak. “There is… another thing that makes me… happy. Besides saving people.”

Gently, your legs were slid off his lap, and he stood to go collect his gear. You watched absently as he slid on everything he needed, the mechanical click of his belt and the latch of his cape securing into place too familiar of a sound. He approached, already as silent as the mist pressing against your windows.

Your head raised from where your fingers had been rubbing behind Thursday’s ears, “And what’s that?”

Damian said nothing else. He shut his eyes against the kiss he laid to your palm, stroked at Thursday’s fur, and then disappeared into the messy morning, much less messy than before.


	21. No.

“You’re so  _bony_ ,” you said, prodding the flesh around his back.

Damian only grunted. “Artificial spine.”

“I know,” you rolled your eyes, and pressed your cheek to a chink in said spine, “I just meant your ribs. Yeah. You’ve got cute little bony ribs.”

He snorted. It was amused, though, and you were glad to find a great lack of insecurity in his voice. It bled through to the rest of him, disarming himself until he came undone, face catching the spare tears of rainfall when it manages to change course through his bay window. You had to be absolutely crushed together on the seat in order to fit. This would never be a problem, especially if he keeps sighing peacefully like that.

“Quit it,” Damian says to no action in particular.

You assumed he meant breathing, so you huffed annoyingly on his neck, “No.”

He had a gift for adding a tone of enjoyment to any negative emotion, giving an irritated glare a note of comfortability. Damian rolled his hips in a way where he could half-shove you off the cushions, leaving you scrambling for an anchor, squealing and laughing when you got a good grip on his shirt and hauled yourself up from over the edge.

“You’re a cruel man, Damian Wayne,” you laughed.

Damian shrugged, “Such is the way of kings.”

“Not you.”

Damian’s hand snuck back to pinch your side, “That’s nearly an oxymoron, moron.”

Worming out of the way of (and intentionally scooting even closer to) his touch, you slipped your arms through his and bound them about his chest, feeling his heart startle under one palm.

“You pointing out literary terms in casual conversation is hot.”

“I wouldn’t call this casual,” Damian whispered. He stole the hand you had against his chest and covered the fact he wanted to hide his pulse by kissing your fingers, “beloved.”

It was now your turn to say, blushing, “Quit it.”

He assumed you meant the kissing, so he closed your fist and kissed your knuckles. You feel the smirk instead of see it. “ _No_.”


End file.
